STAFF REPORT
July 15, 2011
Codex Alimentarius Committee on Food Hygiene (CCFH)
Physical Working Group on the Revision of the Principles for the Establishment and Application of Microbiological Criteria for Foods (CAC/GL 21-1997)
July 11-13, 2011, Grange, Ireland
Overview
The CCFH physical working group on the Revision of the Principles for the Establishment and Application of Microbiological Criteria for Foods met in Grange, Ireland, from July 11 to 13, 2011. The physical working group was attended by delegates representing 22 member countries, FAO and WHO, and 4 observer organizations. This working group is led by Finland and co-chaired by Japan. Dr. Sebastian Hielm(Finland) and Dr. Hiroshi Yoshikura(Japan) chaired the Session with Kerry Dearfield (USDA FSIS) as US Delegate to CCFH. Emily Mathusa of GMA attended the physical working group meeting as a member of the US Delegation.
Background information
This work was initiated by the Committee during the 41st Session in 2009. In spring of 2010, a physical working group met in Tokyo to begin the revision of the document. After review and discussion during the 2010 CCFH 42nd Session, key areas for improvement of the draft included making the guidelines more user friendly, providing illustrative examples, categorization of microbiological criteria into groups, and inclusion of technical and statistical aspects of microbiological criteria. The Committee supported the ongoing development by FAO and WHO of a tool to assess the performance of sampling plans.
Key points
The working group used the draft document put together by Japan that attempted to capture all the comments received during and since the last CCFH Session. The working group moved through the draft document line by line with a focus on making the document more straight forward for the reader. The following are the key points and areas of discussion during the meeting.
Categorization of the establishment of microbiological criteria
During the physical working group meeting, it was proposed by New Zealand that microbiological criteria be broadly categorized into the following three categories: GHP-based, risk-based, and hazard-based. Text was created to illustrate the development of each category with examples for their use.
Markers of pathogenicity
One area of contention was the addition of genetic markers or traits as targets when applying microbiological criteria. Some countries opposed this addition, but the USDA representative on the US delegation felt strongly that this remain in the document and mentioned to me that this is the direction that the Agency is going in the future for testing. USDA agreed that context would need to be provided on a case by case basis. This may be an area that GMA may want to further discuss and provide comments on, especially as it may relate to the non-O157 STEC issue. Please contact Emily directly if you would like to discuss.
Development of annexes
Two annexes were considered. The first annex would presentillustrative examples on the establishment of microbiological criteria. The working group agreed that this would be an important annex, but was unable to spend a great deal of time on this annex due to time constraints. The basic format of the annex was rearranged and several examples were reviewed. The working group preferred to limit the number of examples presented and their length. The working group will request another physical working group meeting next summer to continue work on this annex.
The second annex would address the technical and statistical aspects of microbiological criteria. The working group agreed that this could require a great deal of effort that may be more suited to the Joint FAO/WHO Meetings on Microbiological Risk Assessment (JEMRA). The working group was also concerned about duplicating efforts of the Codex Alimentarius Committee on Methods Analysis and Sampling (CCMAS).
Request to remove “science-based” language by the EU
The EU requested that we remove language from the document recommending that microbiological criteria be science-based and attempted to soften the language with alternative text asking to take into account the “available science”. This was another area of contention for many delegations because this is meant to be a scientific document, so using the original language is appropriate. The EU’s suggested text would only weaken the document. Since consensus could not be reached, the original sentence and the proposed alternative text were placed in square brackets for discussion during the 43rd Session.
Next Steps
The revised draft was circulated for comment and discussion at the upcoming CCFH meeting (43rd Session) in December 5-9, 2011 in Miami, Florida. The working group agreed that further work is needed on development of the two annexes and will request to have another physical working group meeting in the late spring/summer of 2012.
For further information, contact Emily Mathusa at (202) 637-4807 ().