Food Chemicals Codex Forum

What is the Food Chemicals Codex Forum?

The Food Chemicals Codex (FCC) Forum provides an online opportunity for interested parties to submit their input as USP's Food Additives Expert Committee develops and revises standards for FCC. In order for a new or revised standard to be adopted into FCC, it must first be proposed in the FCC Forum for public review and comment.

Following review of comments received and approval by the Food Additives Expert Committee, the standard will be published in FCC or its Supplements. Beginning with the sixth edition, FCC will be published in a regular, biennial edition, with one Supplement issued between each edition. FCC Sixth Edition is scheduled to be published in Spring 2008.

The FCC Forum will be available on the USP Web site at http://www.usp.org/fcc/forum/ until USP publishes the sixth edition of FCC, at which point FCC Forum will only be available to FCC's print and electronic subscribers.

Future FCC Forum highlights will be available for all at http://www.usp.org/fcc/notices/. Interested parties can contact USP for additional information.

How to submit comments

USP encourages interested parties to submit comments and data regarding proposed or adopted standards. Submissions concerning a particular item that appears in FCC Forum should be submitted to the appropriate USP scientific staff liaison identified at the end of the Briefing that accompanies each item. To submit comments and data to a liaison, use the e–mail address listed in the Staff Directory of FCC Forum.

For general inquiries or in cases where a particular liaison is not identified, contact USP by telephone (301–881–0666) or fax (301–816–8373).

Public review and comment period deadlines

USP has implemented a 60–day comment period for the first FCC Forum. For all future postings of FCC Forum, the comment period will be 90 days.

After the comment period has closed, any comments received will be assessed by staff, and then presented to the Food Additives Expert Committee of the USP Council of Experts for final consideration and balloting in accordance with the Rules and Procedures of the Council of Experts. The final standards approved by the Food Additives Expert Committee will then enter the next edition of the FCC.

The deadline to submit comments on standards in the June 2007 FCC Forum is August 15, 2007 unless otherwise stated in the individual Briefing.