Governments and intergovernmental organizations such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission have the principal role in establishing certain food control standards. In establishing safety standards, it is important that governments allow industry, the scientific community and the public to contribute information and ideas. Standards and guidelines should be sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of changing technology. At the same time, governments should apply those controls that will assure real and meaningful safety benefits rather than merely perceived benefits. Any safety standards that are developed have real costs for governments, industry and consumers.
Governments bear an obligation to monitor and enforce safety standards.
Industry bears the primary responsibility for implementing safety standards and must invest the resources such as staff time, systems, training and equipment required to put the standards into practice. Ultimately, consumers will pay the costs for food safety standards both through taxes to pay for the government control authorities' activities and through food prices, which must reflect all the costs of production, including the cost of quality assurance. Control of food safety and quality encompasses a broad number of factors, and governments must carefully select the areas in which they will set standards. In particular, quality includes attributes of food that are market concerns rather than public health matters. Governments should focus their attention and resources on the public health aspects of quality and on those market-related aspects of quality and labelling that will protect consumers against fraud and misleading claims.