The committee discussed in details on the implementation of the health related regulations and quarantine measures while food and food related materials are exporting and importing from different regions. To overcome the barriers and for easy implementation, formulation of a simplified process to submit all the information required by importing countries will be formulated by FAO, which may finally leads towards paperless, electronic certification system. Difficulties in assessing the authenticity of food were discussed in details as raised by many countries. Especially while re-exportation of food items by a second country mixing of material from different origins and fraud at the time of labelling are the factors to be monitored to minimize such issues. Non availability of analytical methods based information to detect food frauds is discussed and need to develop such criteria by highlighting the specific quality parameters by the producing countries was taken into consideration.
Recently revised IPC quality standards for pepper and pepper products were discussed and shared among the interesting parties from further discussion for such initiative.
