"Engagement and commitment" - Codex Secretary on a productive year for Codex

As 2025 begins, we asked Codex Secretary Sarah Cahill to reflect on the past year, and these are her thoughts.

With 17 meetings, hundreds of newly adopted standards and a new Strategic Plan, 2024 was surely a busy year for Codex. What have been the highlights or things you could not possibly have imagined? 

It was an intense but productive year and while the adoption of new Codex texts, a new Strategic Plan and election of a new Chairperson and Vice-Chairpersons are always a highlight. For me some of the things I believe are worth mentioning include the solution-oriented approach that we in the Codex Secretariat observed across the 17 meetings this year, which laid a strong foundation for a successful Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) and which in my view is a really positive reflection on our Members and Observers. I would also mention the way in which CCEXEC worked, especially CCEXEC87, to progress the strategic plan and provide the Commission with pathways to address some challenging issues; the huge number of new work proposals, all approved by CAC47, highlighting the ongoing demand for Codex work, including in some novel areas; the publication of the EWG handbookwhichhad gotten side-tracked by the pandemic; the value of the Codex Procedural Manual in both guiding and helping ensure consistency across our work (at least for me it has been super helpful in the past six months); and our ongoing exploration with different meeting modalities from correspondence to virtual to in person with webcasting to hybrid. I think the list could go on and I could not have imagined the extent of what has been achieved in 2024, a tribute to the engagement and commitment of the global Codex family. 

This year also marked your appointment as Codex Secretary. How is it going? 

It has been a really busy start, and I am very pleased to have concluded my first Commission in this role. It was intense but I think overall went very well. In the last six months, I attended a number of Codex committees for the first time as well as several regional events, all of which have given me new insights into our work and opportunities for improvements. I have had excellent support from the Codex Secretariat team and really great interaction and collaboration with Members and Observers. And the collaboration with and support of Steve Wearne as Chairperson as well as his Vice-chairpersons has been incredible. The reason we use the term Codex family has never been more clear. The demand and support for Codex standards is clear, as is the need to do more with less and continue to evolve to meet the needs of a dynamic world. There is a lot to do and I think to meet these expectations, I think we will need to look at more efficient, cost effective and inclusive ways of working, more use of technology and finding a work balance that is tenable for the Codex Secretariat, Members and Observers and our scientific advice providers. 

The reason we use the term Codex family has never been more clear

Looking to 2025, how do you see Codex contributing to protecting consumer health and facilitating fair practice in the food trade? 

In 2025 there will be 16 Codex meetings, our new CAC Chairperson and Vice-chairpersons will be at the helm, the framework for monitoring and evaluation of the new Codex Strategic plan will be developed, several committees will be co-hosted and in some committees we will again apply a hybrid modality. So it will be all hands on deck again for 2025. I think it will be interesting to hear from the Coordinating Committees that meet in 2025 their views and plans on how to best work towards achieving the goals and outcome of the new Strategic Plan for 2026 to 2031. We will have interesting new work proposals under discussion such as recycled packaging and will also be considering in CCGP how we can optimally use our existing processes to consider new work proposals and if we need to enhance our procedures for working by correspondence in light of advancing technology. Many of our committees are reviewing some of our older standards and starting work to update some of these, which is very important to ensure the Codex Alimentarius remains relevant. With three commodity committees meeting next year, one of them working by correspondence only, how we can efficiently update and take a more horizontal or group approach to commodity standards will be an important consideration. I think we need to continue to strongly encourage the generation of data from different parts of the world to support risk assessment and ensure the standards we are developing are based on globally representative data. Within the Codex Secretariat we will start work on guidance on how to prepare new work proposals, continue to monitor the use and impact of Codex texts taking into consideration the valuable feedback of Members at CCEXEC and CAC and review the way we need to work to optimally support the goals and outcomes of the new Strategic Plan.  

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