Accra, Jan. 28, GNA - The Ghana Standards Board (GSB) on Wednesday launched the website of the Codex Alimentarius Commission to facilitate information exchange on food safety between its 44 member countries.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission was established by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop international food standards and also assist developing countries to ensure fair practices in food trade. GSB is the member of the Coordinating Committee for Africa (CCAFRICA), a subsidiary body of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which is a joint venture of the FAO and WHO with over 170 member

countries and 157 international non-governmental observers. The Commission provides a neutral forum where governments, consumer groups, industry and academia meet to exchange ideas on food safety and trade and to adopt standards.

Speaking at the launch, Madam Charlotte Ohene-Manu, Deputy Executive Director of the GBS, said Ghana, which was the current coordinator of the CCAFRICA, was given the mandate to develop the website after the one developed by Morocco had been offline for about a year. She appealed to Ghanaians to be health conscious and expressed her satisfaction with the initiative, which, would help to provide the requisite information on food security and activities of the commission as needed by consumers, researchers, academic institutions and the general public.

Prof. Samuel Sefa-Dedeh, Dean, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, University of Ghana, who launched the website: www.codexafique.org said Ghana was nominated coordinator of the Codex Coordinating Committee for Africa (CCAFRICA) at the 17th Session of Codex held in Rabat, Morocco, and was excepted to host its 18th Session from February 24 to 28, 2009. He said CCAFRICA was mandated to define the problems and needs of the region concerning food standards, promote within the committee contacts for the mutual exchange of information on proposed regulatory initiatives and problems arising from food control and stimulate the strengthening of food control infrastructures.

Prof. Sefa-Dedeh said it was also expected to recommend to the Commission the development of worldwide standards for products of interest to the region which included products considered by the committee to have an international market potential. He said the CCAFRICA was also expected to promote coordination of all regional food standard works undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organisations within the region. FAO has further requested Ghana to undertake an exercise to collect and collate data from the 44 member countries of the CCAFRICA, with the objective of undertaking a situational analysis of their Codex activities and infrastructure.

The data would also serve as the basis for investigating and identifying food safety matters of interest to the region, set up a database of experts in the region to assist countries to make necessary inputs and place the information on the current Codex website for Africa.