John Lupien
The Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA) held its 46th Session In Hong Kong, China from 17-21 March 2014. The CCFA is a committee of the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC). The CAC was established about 50 years ago by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop international standards for foods and related codes of practice, guidelines and recommendations to protect consumers and ensure fair practices in international food trade.
The CCFA is the CAC committee assigned the role of assuring that all Codex approved food additives are used at levels that are safe and effective, whether included in specific Codex food standards, or intended for use in standardised or non-standardised foods. In earlier years of the existence of the CCFA its purpose was to endorse the use of additives included in specific Codex Commodity standards. In more recent years work has been focused on the production of a General Standard for Food Additives (GSFA) that includes all food additives intended for use in Codex standardised foods or for use in other foods traded internationally.
Additives that can be considered by Codex must first be evaluated by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). Experts appointed to serve on JECFA meetings review chemical, toxicological and related data to determine a chemical specification for each substance evaluated, and to make a recommendation on the safety of each substance, setting an acceptable daily intake level for substances that may present problems if consumed at high levels, or recommending that no Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) need to be specified for substances with very low toxicity that can be used at good manufacturing practice (GMP) levels in foods.
The GSFA has been constructed with a preamble that sets out how the GSFA should function, including setting up food categories that cover standardised foods and food products that have not been standardised. The GSFA contains three tables of food additives. Table 1 lists additives allowed in specific food products or food categories. Table 2 is a list of the GSFA food categories with additives allowed in each food category listed under the food category heading.
Table 3 lists additives permitted in food in general, unless otherwise specified, in accordance with good manufacturing practice (GMP). All additives in the GSFA must first be evaluated by the FAO/WHO Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) which sets specifications for each additive, assesses the use and effectiveness of each additive, and sets safe use levels on the basis of an acceptable daily intake level. If an additive does not present any safety concerns when used at GMP levels in food products, JECFA assigns the additive with an “ADI not specified” status, meaning the additive can be used at GMP levels.
Many governments rely on JECFA reviews and Codex listing of JECFA reviewed additives in setting national food additive regulations. In addition, many food sector processors will only purchase and use additives that have been through the JECFA/Codex process. In both cases manufacturers of substances that are considered to be food additives are aware of the fact that favorable JECFA review and Codex action to include their additives in the GSFA are important to acceptance of their products in various countries and food processing industries.
In the past, the CCFA has given priority consideration to additives with a specific ADI, since these are the additives that may present food safety risks. This created a problem for the GSFA since the safest additives listed in Table 3 were in many cases excluded from use in any Codex standard unless the additive was listed in the specific standard, and were also excluded from use in foods in about 40 different GSFA food categories listed in an Annex to Table 3. Since the goal of the GSFA is safe use of additives, it is a curious anomaly of the CCFA work that the GSFA was constructed to discourage the use of the safest additives in a large number of food categories.
Starting with the 43rd CCFA session, action was initiated to possibly remedy this problem. In order to make progress in improving the GSFA it was decided at the 44th session that all products in Table 3 that were acidifying agents, thickening agents, emulsifiers and stabilisers should be considered for more general use in all appropriate food categories in Tables 1 and 2.
To help in accelerating this work, the 45th CCFA session agreed to an Electronic Working Group chaired by the USA to prepare proposals for Table 3 additives in Tables 1 and 2. This Electronic Working Group received inputs from many Codex Member Countries and other interested bodies, and prepared a working paper for a physical Working Group meeting that took place in Hong Kong from 18-19 March 2014. The GSFA Physical Working Group was also chaired by Dr Paul Honigfort from the USA Food and Drug Administration. About 40 Codex Member countries and 25 Codex recognised non-governmental organisations (NGOs) participated in the Working Group session. IUFoST was represented in the Working Group session and the CCFA session by Dr John R. Lupien, Adjunct Professor of Food Science, University of Massachusetts, and Professor Duo Li of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
The Working Group gave detailed consideration to proposals for acidifying agents, thickening agents, stabilisers and emulsifiers, and to some other additives listed in Table 3 of the GSFA. The results of the discussion led to approval of a number of substances that had been excluded from Tables 1 and 2 of the GSFA for a number of years, due to CCFA concentration and priority given to additives with a JECFA assigned ADI. The results of the Working Group meeting were presented to the CCFA Plenary in a report from the Working Group session.
The 14-18 March 2014 CCFA session was chaired by Professor Junshi Chen of China. The session was opened by Dr Xiaohong Chen of the Chinese National Health and Family Planning Commission. Dr J Chen stressed the importance of CCFA and Codex work on additives which contributes to consumer protection and proper food trade. He assured the CCFA that the Government of China would continue to give full support to CCFA and CAC.
The CCFA 46th Session was attended by 50 Member Country delegations, one Member Organisation (the European Union), observer delegations from 33 international NGOs, and FAO and WHO, about 400 individual participants in all.
The CCFA discussed additive-related referrals to CCFA by the CAC and other Codex committees. The CCFA noted information referred by the Codec Committee of Fishery and Fishery Products, and the Codex Committee of Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses. It agreed to changes in GSFA texts to some notes used in relation to specific additives. Notable among these was a request to JECFA to re-evaluate benzoates with particular regard to their use in sports drinks.
The representatives of FAO and WHO informed the CCFA of recent scientific work done by either or both organisations, and presented recommendations for the food additives evaluated by the June 2013 JECFA session.
CCFA endorsed new and revised provisions for the use of phosphates in quick frozen or breaded fish and shellfish products.
CCFA reviewed and endorsed GSFA provisions that would fully align additive provisions in five different meat standards with the GSFA. The additives involved included phosphates and nitrites in processed meat products. In preparing recommendations on this agenda item the delegation of Australia had used a decision tree approach to help simplify the alignment process. The CCFA Chairman pointed out that the alignment process was a complicated exercise and complimented the Committee and the delegation of Australia for the work performed.
Alignment of other standardised food will take place and Australia will continue to lead this work through an electronic Working Group, with the result of this work to be discussed at the next CCFA session.
CCFA discussed a revision on Guidelines for the Simple Evaluation of Food Additives Intakes. These Codex Guidelines were adopted in 1989 and CCFA delegations desired an updating to simplify the work involved, and to take account of changes in food habits and intake over the past 25 years. The delegation of Brazil provided a summary of the work done on revised guidelines. The comments received had been included in a new draft, and after discussion of the comments the CCFA agreed to forward the revised guidelines to the CAC for final adoption at the Step 5/8 level.
CCFA reviewed information on several additives that had been included in earlier versions of the GSFA, but were not used in foods at present. It was agreed that provisions for ammonium adipates, ammonium lactate, choline salts and esters, chlorine dioxide, formic acid, and potassium hydrogen malate should be removed from the GSFA. Other substances under consideration would require a new JECFA evaluation before further GSFA consideration could be given. These included dipotassium tartrate, monopotassium tartrate, potassium bisulfite, monosodium tartrate, potassium adipates, potassium ascorbate, potassium malate, sodium adipates, and propane.
The CCFA endorsed a series of recommendation made by the 18-19 March 2014 GSFA Working Group. These endorsements covered the horizontal use of acidifying agents, thickening agents, stabilisers and emulsifiers, and some other additives in the GSFA Tables 1 and 2. The work on this task will have to be continued, but the success in starting a more comprehensive approach to the GSFA is a major achievement. The USA will chair a further Electronic Working Group on this topic, and a Physical Working Group that will meet immediately before the next CCFA Session. Among future work in this regard is work of additives used in wine production, and use of nisin in some meat products.
In both the 18-19 March 2014 Working Group meeting and the CCFA plenary session discussion was held on the use of a note, note !^! in the GSFA, that essentially negates the work of Codex and GSFA. The discussion was focused on selected sweeteners, but was more general in its breadth. No consensus could be reached about either changing the note, or eliminating it from the GSFA. The delegation of the United Kingdom will lead an Electronic Working Group to prepare new proposals for consideration at the 2015 CCFA session. Following the various discussions related to the 18-19 2014 Working Group report, the CCFA agreed to forward to the CAC draft and proposed draft food additive provisions of the GSFA for adoption at Step 8 and Step 5/8, and other provisions recommending the revocation of certain food additive provisions. An Electronic Working Group led by the USA will prepare proposals for additional Table 3 applications on a horizontal basis in Tables 1 and 2 of the GSFA for discussion in the 2015 CCFA session.
CCFA agreed to a number of changes in the International Numbering System used for food additives in the GSFA and in some national regulations. It also prepared a list of additives for possible JECFA review and agreed to set up a more structured approach for request to JECFA for review. Food colors will be used as the model for evaluating requests to JECFA.
The next CCFA session will be held in China from 23-27 March 2015, and will be proceeded by a 20-21 March 2015 Working Group meeting.
The report of CCFA 46 is available on the Codex website, including the main report, and annexes on recommendation to the CAC for final adoption of many horizontal food additive provisions, and on other topics discussed in this report. The work of the CCFA is important to all food scientists and technologists and a review of the CCFA report should be of interest to all involved in IUFoST related work.
Dr John Lupien is Adjunct Professor of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA, a former (1986-2000) Chief of the FAO / WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission, and a former Director of the FAO Food and Nutrition Division. He is a Fellow of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology (IAFoST), a former Member of the Editorial Advisory Board for The World of Food Science, and is a regular correspondent for IUFoST; E-mail: john@jrlupien.net
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