The Task Force On Animal Feeding was established by the 23rd Session of the Commission in 1999 with the aim to ensure safety and quality of foods of animal origin, to develop guidelines or standards as appropriate on Good Animal Feeding practice. As agreed at that meeting the Task Force shall submit a preliminary report to the Commission in 2001. The Task Force shall complete its work in 2003.
The second session of the Task Force on Animal Feeding was held in March 2001.
Prior to the meeting a revised draft Code was circulated and information about standards and validated methods used for the examination of feeding stuffs and lists established by different governments to control the use of prohibited and undesirable substances in animal feeding stuffs were collected.
Also prior to the Task Force meeting an informal meeting was held to discuss control of the use of prohibited and undesirable substances in animal feeding stuffs.
The Task Force has agreed to obtain additional information on controls of permitted, prohibited and undesirable substances for consideration at the next Session
The Task Force has revised the text of the proposed Draft Code section by section.
The Code is aimed to minimise the risks to health of consumers through the establishment of a feed safety system for food producing animals. The system covers the whole feed producing chain, including all types of operations at farm level. The Task Force also agreed that relevant aspects of animal health and environment should be taken into account to ensure consumers health.
Definitions were established for feed, feed ingredients, feed additives, medicated feed and undesirable substances in feed.
The Task Force agreed to include guidelines for labelling of feed and for record keeping and traceability.
Due to lack of time a drafting group was established to prepare a redraft of the Code based on the Task Force’s agreements and the submitted written comments to be considered at the next Session of the Task Force (except Section 6, cf. below).
A second drafting group will fully develop Section 6 of the Code (On farm production and use of feeding stuffs) according to a terms of references. The draft is for discussion at the next Session of the Task Force.
The Task Force has discussed the subject of lists to control the use of feed ingredients, feed additives and undesirable substances and has identified:
- Positive lists of feed ingredients and additivesIt is not agreed how the Task Force will progress on this. For undesirable substances a working group within the Task Force already proposed a broad categories of undesirable substances to be included in the Code.
- Negative lists of feed ingredients (prohibited substances)
- List of undesirable substances with maximum residue levels
Establishment of maximum levels for contaminants, pesticides, veterinary drugs and microbiological limits is within the mandate of other Codex bodies, but these bodies are not always using a terminology which is common in a feed context, so in any case the necessary links have to be established.
In the part of labelling in the draft Code there is a preliminary statement on GMOs awaiting work in the Committee on Food Labelling and Task Force on Biotechnology.
For on-farm production and use of feedingstuffs, as mentioned earlier, this will be fully developed by a drafting group
In view of the results obtained during the first two years of work in the Task Force on Animal Feeding it is expected that it will be possible to finalize the work on drafting a Code on Good Animal Feeding within the planned time.
The work will cover all relevant topics. For the special issue of lists it is expected that the time schedule will allow work on the principles of establishing of lists and identification of needs, but will not go further in this respect.
The next meeting
is planned to 28-31 May 2002.
