The Codex Alimentarius Commission, Corporate Influence, and International Trade: A Perspective on FDA's Global Role

Abstract

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)l is by all accounts the most sweeping and comprehensive update to U.S. food laws in seventy years, aiming to confront the reality that the nation's food supply has undergone fundamental shifts in its sources, distribution channels, and intermediate handlers. The law's intent is to prevent problems that can cause foodborne illness and enable the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to keep a record of facilities processing food for sale in the United States, a mandate that expands FDA's already global regulatory activities. 2 FSMA gives FDA broad new powers to prevent food safety problems, detect and respond to food safety issues, and improve the safety of imported foods. 3 Because the law specifically aims to update FDA authority in light of the reality of global food and food additive markets, Section 305 FSMA calls for FDA to develop a comprehensive plan to expand the "technical, scientific, and regulatory capacity of foreign governments and their respective food industries in countries that export foods to the United States." 4 Part of its plan for fulfilling its Section 305 obligation is actual presence: FDA has established overseas offices in China,

Global Governance of Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labelling: A Qualitative Analysis

“…This finding regarding industry influence reflects studies of other issue areas at Codex, such as food safety and food-related definitions [12,14,29,30,31,32]. However, the impact of industry influence may be greater in the NCD-related policy space because of the different interests of industry and public health actors: effective measures have the potential to negatively impact industry profits.…”

Interference in public health policy

“…Some of our findings have been described in more detail by others, such as the baby food industry's increasing participation in standard setting agencies such as the Codex Alimentarius (Lee, 2010;Halabi, 2015), where industry representation included over 40 per cent of participants, including within government delegations (Lee, 2010;CAC, 2011).…”

Codex Alimentarius: What Has It To Do With Me?

“…Those members of the delegations sit together for a whole week and are often booked at the same hotels. This situation is known and has been described previously (Halabi, 2015;Smythe, 2009;Suppan, 2006):…”