Codex Alimentarius – Part Four – What is Codex, Exactly?
Originally designed by military and business leaders from the pharmaceutical industry in Germany shortly after World War II, historically, Codex was evolved from a collection of standards and product descriptions for a wide variety of foods developed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1897 and 1911. Austria subsequently pursued the creation of a regional food code, the “Codex Alimentarius Europaeus” between 1954 and 1958. In 1961 the Council of Codex Alimentarius Europaeus adopted a resolution proposing that its work on food standards be taken over by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Today’s “Codex Alimentarius” was formed by the FAO of the United Nations World Health Assembly in 1963. In the mid-1990s Codex Alimentarius signed agreements with the World Trade Organization (WTO), enabling Codex to establish trade standards that the WTO would use to resolve international trade disputes. To explain, perhaps some Trade Agreement backg
