Have you met the Fishmonger?

Codex standards are science-based and developed with input from Codex Members and Observers who bring their experience and expertise to the standard development process. Implementation of Codex standards helps ensure food is safe.

This is the message of the Codex and FAO Fishmonger, who is now online! She brings food safety to life by showing how international standards support safe food in everyday settings. From shellfish and tuna to seaweed and smoked salmon, users of this online feature can explore a range of food safety challenges and learn how science-based standards help prevent risks before products reach consumers. 

The fishmonger stall, through 10 different products allows users to explore different food safety hazards associated with these products, and how the application of Codex standards contributes to ensuring these products are safe to eat. 

With the help of FAO experts from different divisions, and food standards officers from the Codex Secretariat, this innovative online feature describes different hazards and explores the science and risk assessments that inform food safety standards. Crucially, it also underlines the One FAO ethos and multisectoral approach needed to understand and address the complexities of today’s agrifood systems.

“I believe this initiative enhances understanding of the Codex standard-setting process and the role that FAO and WHO play in supporting it through the FAO/WHO Food Safety Scientific Advice Programme and ad hoc expert meetings. These expert bodies generate scientific evidence that informs the work of the various Codex committees, both commodity-specific and horizontal, enabling the development of important standards, codes of practice, guidance documents, and other texts. These outputs help governments and the private sector protect consumers while facilitating trade through the harmonization of requirements,” comments Esther Garrido Gamarro, Fishery Officer at FAO.

This is an important message, too, for the Codex community, which has recognized in its strategic planning the interconnectivity of Codex texts with science, international organizations and those working in the food chain, like the Fishmonger herself. “Codex texts only achieve their intended impact when they are implemented,” comments Codex Secretary, Sarah Cahill. “They are implemented because governments and food businesses trust the science that underpins them, and also because they provide the common basis for the safety of food in trade. Codex does not and cannot work in a silo, but its work is interwoven with that of public and private sectors globally.”