Codex CCCF17 2024 — Session Report (REP24/CF17)
Summary
This is the report of the 17th Session of the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Foods, held in Panama City 15 to 19 April 2024 under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme, forwarded to the 47th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in November 2024 for adoption. The session’s cadmium-specific outputs were two: the adoption for forwarding of a Codex maximum level for cadmium in quinoa of 0.15 mg/kg (whole commodity), and the initiation of new work on a Code of Practice for the Prevention and Reduction of Cadmium Contamination in Foods, to be developed by an electronic working group chaired by the United States with potential commodity-specific annexes for rice, cereals and cereal products, vegetables, fish, and seafood. The session does not restate or revise the matrix-level Codex cadmium maximum levels that live in Codex Standard CXS 193-1995, which remains the operative Codex standard for Cd MLs across food commodities and is not in the current corpus.
Key numbers
Cadmium-specific actions of CCCF17 forwarded to CAC47 for adoption:
| Action | Commodity | Value | Source reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| New ML for cadmium | Quinoa (whole commodity) | 0.15 mg/kg | Appendix VII |
| New ML for lead (companion) | Quinoa (whole commodity) | 0.2 mg/kg | Appendix VII |
| New work approval requested | Code of Practice for the Prevention and Reduction of Cadmium Contamination in Foods | n/a | Appendix IX |
The quinoa ML references Codex Standard CXS 333-2019 for the commodity definition.
Context on the quinoa ML decision (paragraphs 115 to 119): the Committee considered three options for the quinoa cadmium ML (0.10, 0.15, or no separate ML), with 0.15 selected on the rationale that it would produce the lowest rejection rates worldwide while still reflecting the ALARA principle. Quinoa is held separate from the general cereals category because it is a pseudo-cereal. One delegation stated explicitly that cadmium MLs should be set under ALARA because “cereal grains as a group was a serious contributor to exposure to cadmium and in their region, the tolerable weekly intake (TWI) was exceeded for many consumers.”
Context on the new Code of Practice work (paragraphs 130 to 133): the US introduced the discussion paper recalling that the CoP should be considered prior to review or revision of Cd MLs. The existing Code of Practice for the Prevention and Reduction of Cadmium Contamination in Cocoa Beans (CXC 81-2022) serves as a basis for the proposed broader CoP. The Committee identified rice, cereals and cereal products, vegetables, fish, and seafood as the candidate commodities for any commodity-specific annexes, on the grounds that these contribute significantly to cadmium exposure. Initial comments and a first draft are due for consideration at CCCF18.
Methods (brief)
Codex session reports document the deliberations and decisions of a Codex Committee meeting rather than presenting primary scientific analysis. The cadmium-specific content in this report reflects (a) the Committee’s risk-management deliberation on the quinoa ML following a prior JECFA analysis of quinoa cadmium occurrence data presented via the Joint FAO/WHO JECFA Secretariats, and (b) the Committee’s decision to initiate new standards-setting work on a Code of Practice drawing on risk management practices reported in the literature and by Member States. No new toxicological assessment or reference value was derived at this session; the JECFA PTMI of 25 µg/kg b.w./month remains in force and is not revisited in this report. Primary quantitative substance lives in the prior JECFA monographs (73rd meeting 2010 for the PTMI; 91st meeting 2020 for the updated dietary exposure assessment) and in Codex Standard CXS 193-1995 for the matrix-level MLs.
Limitations of this document for wiki purposes: most matrix-level Codex cadmium MLs that regulators and market participants reference (for rice, cereals, leafy vegetables, edible offal, bivalve molluscs, and so on) do not appear in this session report. They are defined in Codex Standard CXS 193-1995 and its amendments, which are separate documents pending ingest. The wiki’s regulation page cites the quinoa ML from this session report and flags the broader matrix-level MLs as pending until CXS 193-1995 is in the corpus.
Implications
- Certification: the 0.15 mg/kg quinoa cadmium ML adds a matrix-specific Codex reference point for an increasingly relevant ingredient in gluten-free and health-food product categories. HMT&C quinoa-containing product thresholds should calibrate against this Codex ML and against the EFSA TWI and ATSDR chronic oral MRL in combination. The forthcoming Codex Code of Practice for cadmium contamination reduction is infrastructure HMT&C should track and reference as it develops through CCCF18 and onward, because its commodity-specific annexes will define what “industry standard practice” looks like for cadmium mitigation in the rice, cereals, vegetables, fish, and seafood supply chains.
- Courses: the CCCF risk-management process (JECFA health-based guidance value → CCCF ML derivation using GEMS/Food occurrence data, rejection-rate analysis, and ALARA principle → CAC adoption) is a teachable standards-setting workflow distinct from the hazard-identification and reference-value workflows at EFSA, EPA, and ATSDR.
- App: quinoa enters the ingredient pipeline with a Codex ML anchor at 0.15 mg/kg. The commodity list for potential Code of Practice annexes (rice, cereals and cereal products, vegetables, fish, seafood) closely tracks the EFSA and JECFA population-level contributor lists already captured on cadmium; no new commodity targets are introduced.
- Microbiome: not addressed.
Provenance notes
License class public-reference-only applied as a conservative default. The extracted text of this document does not contain an explicit Creative Commons or FAO/WHO license block; Codex session reports are working documents of the Codex Alimentarius Commission and are widely treated as freely citable but not explicitly licensed for redistribution. If the full PDF back cover or Codex website indicates a CC license such as CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0-IGO as FAO/WHO typically apply, the license field on this source page should be updated accordingly. Factual content from this report (meeting date, participants, ML values, Committee decisions, project document structure) is not subject to copyright in any case.
Two follow-up ingests this source flags:
First, Codex Standard CXS 193-1995 (General Standard for Contaminants and Toxins in Food and Feed), which contains the matrix-level Codex cadmium MLs for rice, cereals, leafy vegetables, edible offal, bivalve molluscs, and other commodities. Not in the current corpus.
Second, CXC 81-2022 (Code of Practice for the Prevention and Reduction of Cadmium Contamination in Cocoa Beans). Not in the current corpus. This document is the precedent on which the new broader CoP is being built and is directly relevant to the wiki’s cocoa and chocolate content anchored by the JECFA 91st meeting 2020 finding.