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Ensuring that people everywhere can trust the safety and quality of the food they eat is the focus of a UN meeting taking place this week in Rome.

The United Nations food standards body has agreed on a set of residue limits in animal tissues for ractopamine, a veterinary drug mostly used to promote leanness in pigs raised for their meat.

Standards for powdered milk formula, toxins in cereals, the use of flavourings, listings of ingredients, gluten-free foods, frozen food and shellfish are all on the agenda for the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on international food standards, which begins on Monday.

A United Nations commission that is the highest international body on food standards has begun examining new measures to ensure safer infant powdered formula and hygienic egg production in a bid to improve food quality and safeguard consumer health.

Measures to keep cancer-causing and other toxic contaminants, such as led and cadmium, out of the human food chain have advanced a step further with the adoption of new limits by a United Nations commission that is the world’s highest body on food standards.

Labelling to stop consumers overdosing on vitamin and mineral food supplements and guidelines to minimize the emergence of potentially deadly drug-resistant microbes were among some 20 new and amended standards announced today by a United Nations commission that is the highest international body on food standards.

Issues of food quality and safety – from the farm to the consumer’s table – tops the agenda of the annual meeting this week of a standards-setting body established by the United Nations agricultural and health agencies.