The company said that the recent Codex approval is the last outstanding major approval that will unlock a number of important markets such as India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Philippines because such countries look for the Codex adoption of a food ingredient to support their evaluation and approval.
“This has been an important week for approval and adoption of stevia as a mainstream food ingredient around the globe. Early this week, we had a positive vote by the EU Standing Committee recommending steviol glycosides in Europe. We now welcome this week’s Codex adoption which will help to open all remaining new markets for PureCircle’s high purity stevia products around the world,” said PureCircle CEO Magomet Malsagov.
Codex
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, or Codex, was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as part of the Codex adoption, the approved maximum use levels for stevia across all major food and beverage categories have now been defined.
Codex standards and guidelines are developed by committees, which are open to all UN member countries, however the standards and guidelines are then used by many countries as the benchmark for their own internal approval processes, said PureCircle.
The main purposes of the Codex standard are to protect the health of consumers and to ensure fair practices in international trade in food through the development of food standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations.