Foodlaw-Reading
Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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Codex News Item, 21 February 2023
The Codex Committee on Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Foods (CCRVDF) took place in Portland, Oregon, United States of America from 13 to 17 February 2023. Making her debut as Chairperson, Brandi Robinson, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, congratulated delegates at the end of the meeting on “an impressive amount of work in just three days of plenary”.
The Committee advanced maximum residue limits (MRLs) for ivermectin in sheep, pigs, and goats and MRLs for nicarbazin in chicken to Step 5/8 in the Codex standard development process for final adoption by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The Committee also advanced MRLs which were developed through the extrapolation procedure for 11 compounds to Step 5/8. “This means we will have an impressive number of new standards once adopted,” said Robinson.
The Committee will also continue to discuss an approach that could be used for establishing tolerance levels, or what are currently being referred to as “action levels”, due to unintended and unavoidable carryover of veterinary drug residues from feed to food of animal origin.
Robinson said she was encouraged by the commitment of delegates to provide data on new veterinary drugs that can then be evaluated by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) in order for the Committee to establish MRLs. However, the current priority list at CCRVDF is fairly short and, to ensure a full agenda, Robinson called on Members to consider nominations of veterinary drugs which have data for evaluation. This alongside the innovative process already adopted by the Committee to explore ways to enhance the extrapolation procedure to cover species and tissues which are unlikely to have robust data available.
