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Farm-Scape, Episode 1219

The Codex Intergovernmental Task Force on Animal Feeding has identified several issues related to the manufacture and use of animal feed that merit future consideration. Last week the Codex Intergovernmental Task Force on Animal Feeding finalized the last draft of its proposed code of practice for animal feed manufacturing and animal feeding. The code establishes a feed safety system designed to ensure the safety of products from food producing animals.

Judy Thompson, the head of the Canadian Delegation, says, while the work of the task force is now considered complete, several issues have been identified where future work might be required.

"There was unanimous agreement that there was need to look at the development of HACCP principles in how they would relate to the processing of feed and feed ingredients in addition to the ones that are currently available for food. There was other issues that were proposed by the European Commission in terms of rules for a rapid alert system in feed so, if there was a feed issue in one country, how would they alert people in other countries.

There was discussion about aspects of tracability and product tracing related to feed. There was talk about setting limits for undesirable substances such as heavy metals, mycotoxins, dioxins, furans, dioxin like PCB's etceteras in feeds.

There was a list of things that was provided to the Codex Alimentarius commission to see whether or not they want to assign that to some of the current groups or whether they want to come up with a new group to take care of that particular initiative."

Countries involved in the Codex process have until May 28th to make final comments on the proposed code.

Those comments will be forwarded with the document to the Codex Alimentarius Commission in Rome for a final review at which point a decision will be made as to whether it will be adopted, adopted with amendments or discarded.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.