"And on the safety issue, animal studies have already shown organ damage linked with GM-food consumption.  So, there is a safety issue here.  For these, and all the other reasons, the NHF strongly supports labeling of GM food so that consumers may know what they are eating."

          Chairwoman Anne MacKenzie then announced that work on this issue would continue in spite of the objections of the Grain Exporters and that a physical working group would meet in Ghana to discuss GM-food labeling at a date to be determined.

Advertising Definition

          For a number of years, this Committee has been wrestling with a standard definition of advertising that Codex could apply to nutrition and health claims.  The problem with the "model" definition was that it was hugely overbroad and would have covered all forms of non-commercial speech!  Several delegations had supported dropping the idea of even defining advertising at all.

          The NHF also found the definition overbroad and invasive of free-speech rights and made its views known in both written and spoken comments to the Committee.

          The Mexican delegation, supported by the United States and some others, proposed a definition that would add the word "commercial" in front of  "representation" so that – along with other suggested changes – so that the definition would read: "Advertising means any commercial communication to the public by any means, other than labeling, in order to promote directly or indirectly, the sale or intake of a food through the use of nutrition and health claims in relation to the food and its ingredients."

          The Chairwoman found generally broad agreement and support for the Mexican definition and advanced this agenda item to Step 5 (out of an 8-step process).  It looks as if this definition will end up being approved by the Commission at some future time. 

The Final Report

          The last day of any Codex committee meeting is typically reserved for the review and correction of the Final Report of the meeting.  Many delegates, thinking this step to be unimportant, usually leave; but this is actually the time to be the most vigilant as the Final Report – as the record of the meeting – often does not fully reflect what happened at the committee meetings.  Or, what has happened is hidden by omission or anonymity.

          In this case, interestingly enough, the section in the Report that dealt with the GM-food labeling issue anonymized virtually every delegation’s position on the issue and left out an important fair-trade argument for GM-food labeling made by several delegations in counterpoint to the U.S. delegations' anti-labeling stance.  It took almost as long as the original discussion on the GM-labeling subject for the Committee to go through this part of the Report.  After several aborted attempts by other delegations to get their statements on fair trade in the Report, the Chairwoman finally agreed to add into the record the NHF's own statement that "since one of the Codex mandates is to ensure fair-trade practices, developing guidelines on GM/GE food labeling would be appropriate."