9. Ensure that countries encourage truthful, full and accurate labelling and advertising on all foods, which contribute to health and ban advertising and health claims on those that do not;

10. Ensure that countries develop a ban on junk food advertising to children (birth to 18 years);

11. Require that the Chairpersons of CCFL and CCNFSDU report to the Codex Alimentarius Commission every other year on the status of the implementation of the WHO/FAO GLOBAL STRATEGY ON DIET, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH and items 1-10 listed above.

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The added emphasis is mine. Find the original South African comments here.

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Paul Taylor in the UK, one of the health activists closely following these legislative developments, has a slightly pessimistic vies. He added the following information:

By the way, the comments from other countries and NGOs can be found at the WHO website.

See particularly the comments of New Zealand, which include the following:

New Zealand supports the establishment of a group of experts competent in nutritional risk assessment to meet on an ad hoc basis with the purpose to support the work of the CCNFSDU and CCFL. We propose that such a group would focus on the science of nutritional risk assessment, enabling the CCNFSDU and CCFL to focus on the broader issues without being consumed by the detail and science of risk assessment.

The findings of such a group could then feed into the CCNFSDU and CCFL deliberations in areas such as the establishment of minimum and maximum levels of nutrients and related food components in infant formula, the identification of safe and biologically available nutrient compounds for use in foods for infants and young children, criteria for the establishment of maximum levels in vitamin-mineral food supplements and consideration of the safety and bioavailability of the nutrient sources, food fortification principles, and food safety considerations for nutrients and other substances that are the subject of health claims.

New Zealand believes this is a specialist area, and therefore warrants the establishment of a specialist group.

This might not be a good development, I think, as the work on criteria for the establishment of maximum levels in vitamin-mineral food supplements could potentially become even less transparent than it is already.

From scanning through all of the published comments I can also confirm that there appears to be a consensus for any work that Codex does towards the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health to be carried out within the current Terms of Reference of the two committees involved (Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses – CCNFSDU; Codex Committee on Food Labelling CCFL). As such, the statements on some health freedom websites last year - that the Terms of Reference of these two committees are going to be changed - are predictably proving to be wholly inaccurate at best. Regrettably therefore I remain convinced that in participating in the implementation of the Global Strategy Codex is likely to pay little if any real attention to optimum nutrition or dietary supplements.