News from Vientiane Times, Tuesday May 15, 2018

Country from across the region are meeting for the Asean Task Force on Codex in Vientiane from May 14-16 to improve food production standards in response to the Codex system and drive export quality in international.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission (known as Codex) an international standards code on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, which has completely changed the situation of the international food trade and resulted in the importance of international food standard.

Under Codex, World Trade Organization (WTO) members have the right to take sanitary and phytosanitary measures necessary for the protection of the health of customers and ensuring fair practice in the food trade such as promoting the development and periodic reviews of standards, guidelines and recommendations with respect to all aspects of sanitary and phytosanitary measures.

Speaking at the 18^th Meeting of the ASEAN Task Force on Codex (ATFC) at the Lao Plaza Hotel, Director General of the Food and Drug Department, Ministry of Health, Dr. Somthavy Changvisommid said as ASEAN nation are members of the Coded Alimentations and WTO, a secure free trade and safe food approach to international and regional trading systems is needed. The meeting was principally to enhance ASEAN’s position in international standardization forums such as the CODEXALIMENTARIUS Commission (CAC) with the upcoming meeting being the 41^st session in Italy.

The CAC has a mandate to organize and promote coordination for the development of international food standard. Thes standards are used largely as a reference for United Nation member countries as well as WTO SPS agreement. Codex in ASEAN has an importance role in considering food exports with the main regional export commodities being rice, palm oil, fish and fishery products.

Dr. Somthavy said the animal ATFC meeting enabled the building of a productive dialogue between ASEAN countries and provided an invaluable opportunity for networking to enable cooperation an d communication among food regulatory and standard setting stakeholders.