The Work of the United Nations

International standards for the wholesomeness and safety of foods have been provided since 1962 by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), which was established by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The CAC's objective is to guide food-producing industries and to protect the health of consumers. In arriving at its standards, guidelines and principles, the CAC draws on the work of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), which was formed in 1956 to advise the FAO and the WHO, and, through them, member governments of the United Nations Organization on the use of food additives.

To date, JECFA had evaluated more than 1,300 food additives:

• JECFA has established principles for the evaluation, specification and analysis of food additives.

• JECFA provides information about the amounts of food additives which can be consumed every day without adverse effects. This information is provided as an Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI), which is expressed in milligrams of the substance per kilogram body weight of the consumer.
  

• JECFA determines whether food additives are useful and technologically necessary for the production, wholesomeness, palatability, storage, transport, and marketing of foods.

Good Manufacturing practice (GMP) means that the amount of an authorized additive used in food is the minimum necessary to produce the desired effect. In most cases, the quantity of an additive which is used is limited by technical, economic or taste considerations.

In 1987, JECFA confirmed that monosodium glutamate was safe. The committee decided that it was not necessary to set a numerical Acceptable Daily Intake. JECFA adopts the definition "ADI not specified" when the committee concludes that a food additive is of such low toxicity that establishment of an ADI in numerical form is not necessary.