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After ten years of discussions, the Codex Committee on Fish and Fishery Products (CCFFP) at its 18-22 September meeting in Beijing, China, finally agreed on amendments to the Standard for canned sardines and sardine-type products (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 8 July 2004). At the request of Chile, the Committee added the species Clupea bentincki to the Codex definition of sardines. The Committee also revised the labelling guidelines for sardines to allow for more detailed information on the species and its origin.
Countries have long been haggling at both the Codex Committee and the WTO over which sardines should be allowed to be called sardines in international trade. In 2002, Peru launched - and won - a dispute against the EU over the EU’s refusal to allow the Pacific species Sardinops sagax sagax to be labelled as sardines in the European market despite a Codex Standard 94 Article, which explicitly recognises the species as “sardines”. The WTO case highlighted the importance of international standards, such as Codex, for ensuring compliance with WTO rules, given that the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade states that measures based on international standards are “rebuttably presumed” not to pose unnecessary obstacles to trade. The draft amendments have now been forwarded to the Codex Alimentarius Commission for final adoption. The next meeting of the CCFFP will take place in early 2008.
Documents of the meeting are available at http://www.codexalimentarius.net/download/report/666/fp28_01e.pdf.
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