Analysis of the Effects on Establishment of International Standards by Codex Alimentarius Commission

CODEX 국제식품규격위원회의 국제표준제정 동향 분석

The importance of the standards and its related texts established by Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) had been increased by the Agreement of Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) in World Trade Organization (WTO). To meet the needs of WTO SPS Agreement, biennial CAC meeting had been changed to every year. This study was conducted to analyze the effects on interval between CAC meetings. The years of adoption, revision and amendment of CAC texts were collected from the official standard list and individual texts from CAC homepage. The period since establishment of CAC was divided into four groups by starting negotiation of Uruguay Round, WTO foundation and reducing the interval between CAC meetings. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS program. The numbers of CAC standards, guidelines, recommendations, maximum residue levels, and miscellaneous texts were 202, 56, 46, 3 and 5, respectively. Since 8 documents didn't contain the adoption year, these texts were eliminated to analyze adoption year. For adoption, annually 11.26 texts were established since establishment of CAC and there were no significant difference among the 4 groups. However the average numbers of revisions and amendments of adopted texts for overall periods and for each period were 7.56, 0.93, 6.50, 17.20 and 19.75, respectively. The average numbers of overall decisions, defined as summation of adoption, revision and amendment of texts, for overall periods and for each period were 12.37, 6.27, 9.00, 17.40 and 29.25, respectively. There were significant differences by the WTO foundation and the interval between CAC meetings. The reduced interval of CAC meetings influenced to increase number of revisions and amendments of adopted texts, but not yet adoption of new text.