Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives JECFA

Penicilium oxalicum var. Armeniaca CCM 8242 strain produces an anthaquinone-type pigment related to carmine and patented as Arpink Red. The pigment is produced during batch submerse cultivation, harvested, and purified. It is presently under evaluation by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) for use as a food colorant. ... 

FAO/WHO (2006) Summary and conclusions of the sixty-seventh meeting of the Joint FAO/ WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), 20-29 June 2006. JECFA, Rome... 

The standards and limits adopted by the Codex Alimentarius Commission are intended for formal acceptance by governments in accordance with its general principles. Codex Alimentarius permits only those antioxidants which have been evaluated by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) for use in foods. Antioxidants may be used only in foods standardised by Codex. The antioxidant provisions of Codex Commodity Standards are included in and superseded by the provision of this Standard. Food categories or individual foods where the use of additives are not allowed or are restricted are defined by this Standard. The primary objective of establishing permitted levels of use of antioxidants in various food groups is to ensure that the intake does not exceed the acceptable daily intake (ADI). 

Toxicological evaluations of food additives and of contaminants, naturally occurring toxicants and residues of veterinary drugs in food produced by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), and of pesticide residues in food by the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) are used by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and national governments to set international food standards and safe levels for protection of the consumer. 

The stmcmre-based, tiered TTC approach as outlined by Munro et al. (1996, 1999) is used by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) in a procedure for the evaluation of flavoring substances in food, including an acceptance of the general TTC of 1.5 pg/person/day, i.e., the US-FDA Threshold of Regulation (Section 4.13.1). The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) also uses this approach for evaluation of flavoring substances, except that the general TTC of 1.5 pg/person/day is not accepted (Larsen 2006). 

In 1961, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and the Joint Meeting of Experts on Pesticides Residues (JMPR) adopted this approach in a slightly modified form The safe level was called the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) and expressed in mg/kg body weight per day (Vermeire et al. 1999, ECETOC 2003). Usually, a safety factor of 100 is used by JECFA and JMPR for establishing ADIs by this ADI approach however, the procedures adopted by JECFA and JMPR do not generate a clear justification for deviation from the factor of 100, but in some individual cases, an expert explanation is given for the use of factors other than 100 (Vermeire et al. 1999). 

The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) was established in 1955 to consider chemical, toxicological, and other aspects of contaminants and residues of veterinary drugs in foods for human consumption. The Codex Committee on Food Additives and Contaminants and the Codex Committee on Residues of Veterinary Dmgs in Foods identify food additives, contaminants, and veterinary drug residues that should receive priority evaluation and refer them to JECFA for assessment before incorporating them into Codex standards. 

In addition, current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines outline a series of short-term and in vitro tests for the safety assessment of bound residues together with their chemical characterization (5). A study of reversibility of adduct formation is also included and as with the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) recommendation, drugs are investigated in an individual manner. It seems likely that the JECFA and FDA approaches, at least in general terms, will become widely adopted in this particular area of hazard and risk assessment. 

Internationally, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) periodically considers food additives, including antioxidants, on the basis of all available scientific data to establish acceptable daily intake levels (92) and specifications on the identity and purity of the additives. The conclusions of JECFA are published in numerous reports and technological summaries by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the WHO Technical Report Series and WHO Food Additives Series. Such information provided by JECFA is used by the Joint FAO/ WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission in implementing the Joint FAO/WHO Standards Program, which was established to elaborate international standards for foods to protect the health of consumers, to ensure fair practices in food trade, and to facilitate international trade (90). 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy is based on the conclusions of the Joint FAO/ WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). In its Thirty-Second Report (1988), it concluded, on the basis of its safety assessment of residues of estradiol-17/3, progesterone, and testosterone, and in view of the difficulty of determining the levels of residues attributable to the use of these hormones as growth promoters in cattle, that it was unnecessary to establish an acceptable residue level. As to trenbolone acetate (TBA), a synthetic steroid with anabolic properties, JECFA concluded that its safety assessment could be based on establishing the no-hormonal-effect level. It therefore recommended a maximum residue level of 2 /zg/kg for /3-tren-bolone in meat and of 10 /xg/kg for a-trenbolone in liver on the basis of a daily intake by a 70-kg person of 500 g of meat. /3-Trenbolone is the major metabolite in muscle. For zeranol, an acceptable residue level of 10 /xg/kg for bovine liver and 2 /zg/kg for bovine muscle was established. 

Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), 2001. Safety evaluation of certain mycotoxins in food. Deoxynivalenol, HT-2 and T-2 toxin. FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 74. http //www.inchem.org/ documents/jecfa/jecmono/v4 7je01.htm... 

For these reasons the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) considered that the tumours in the rat bladder were not relevant to humans. Both JECFA and the European Union Scientific Committee on Food concluded that saccharin was not a hazard and approved it for use. Similarly the FDA withdrew their proposal to ban saccharin in 1991. 

Proposals of compounds for which MRLs are elaborated or proposals for the revision of existing MRLs are considered initially by the CCRVDF and then subsequently submitted to the Codex Commission for approval as new work. The scientific data assessments for these compounds are undertaken by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). 

The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives JECFA ... 

However, excessive consumption of non-digestible carbohydrates, such as polydextrose, can lead to gastrointestinal distress. After evaluating a series of clinical studies, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and the European Commission Scientific Committee for Eood (EC/ SCF) concluded that polydextrose was better tolerated than other digestible carbohydrates such as polyols. The committee concluded that polydextrose has a mean laxative threshold of approximately 90 g/day (1.3 g/kg body-weight) or 50 g as a single dose. See also Section 18. 

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