Codex Committee on Food Additives and Contaminants (CCFAC)

The Codex Committee on Food Additives was established at the inception of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) in 1963, with terms of reference requiring it to “consider the draft lists of acceptable food additives together with the reports of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) upon which they are based … and to survey and designate wherever possible proposed maximum levels of use for additives in individual foods.” The Kingdom of the Netherlands was appointed as host.

In 1987, the word ‘contaminants’ was added to the Committee’s name, reflecting the fact that it had, at that stage, also been addressing issues of contaminants and pollutants for over 20 years.

In 1991, CAC19 rejected the idea of splitting the work of CCFAC into one committee for food additives and another for contaminants. However, over time, with the increase in the number of additives used in food, and growing problems around contamination due to pollution and changing dietary habits, a split became inevitable. In 2006 a new Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food (CCCF) was established and CCFAC was renamed as the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA).