Dairy standards eyed in Codex meeting

A Codex committee met this week to look at international standards for the dairy industry.

The meeting forms part of an ongoing programme to create international food safety standards under the Codex Alimentarius, a body set up by the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation. The standards may eventually affect the way processors operate worldwide as they become incorporated into national laws.

The meeting, which ended on 1 April, considered amendments to Codex’s general standard for cheese, and also looked at draft standards for skimmed milk, in which the milk fat has been replace with vegetable fat. Other topics include draft standards for whey cheeses, and various types of cheeses such as danbo, cheddar and parmesian.
Since the last meeting, the committee has asked for comments on what values for minimum protein content should be set for cheese, the justification for these values and the means of their expression, either as on a dry matter basis or mass by mass basis.
The revised text from the last time did not rule out protein concentration of milk prior to cheese making or the use of other dairy ingredients, and provided clarity to the issue of protein increase during cheese making relating to casein.
The committee is also looking at revised standards for individual cheeses, processed cheese, dairy spreads, fermented milk drinks, export certificates, analysis and sampling methods, extra hard grating cheese and on the naming of non-standardized dairy products.
However, last year the central decision making Codex body was unable to make a decision on the issue of intellectual property concerns over labelling and composition of parmesan cheese. The issue was sent back to the milk standards committee for further debate.
The EU has said it would oppose the standard setting body over who gets to call their cheese Parmesan (a variation on Parmigiano-Reggiano), and wants the organisation to drop the debate. Further, the 25-member body says the Codex is the wrong forum to debate on the right of “geographical indications” and “intellectual property” over such products, and is going through the WTO and the World Intellectual Property Rights Organisation for the Italian producers instead. The EU argues the use of Parmesan outside of Italy infringes the ‘geographical indication’ intellectual property mark.