There are two ways to do this: go to the Quick Menu on the Home Page and choose the committee you want to find; or else, go to the Committees menu and click on the Committee you need.

The documents that are being discussed appear in the agenda of each Committee. If the agenda of the next meeting is not available, you will find information on the report (Alinorm) of the last session of the committee.

Committee agendas are identified as XX/XX/01.

Another way is to check the monthly Deadlines table on this web page, which contains the documents of all committees and their deadlines (last date on which comments may be submitted).

Further, the last Alinorm may include a request for information/comments on some documents and their deadlines. Besides, Circular Letters or the documents themselves contain the deadlines of agenda documents.

On the CCLAC web page, you will find the last Alinorm of every committee, i.e. the report of the last session. If you want to find a previous Alinorm, you should check the Codex web page, www.codexalimentarius.net

There are two ways to do this: go to Deadlines and click directly on the concerned document, or else go to the specific Committee and click on the document you need.

You can find the available documents of electronic or physical working groups in each Committee or in the table with document deadlines.

You should take into account that some information of the Working Groups is only circulated to Codex Members and Observers participating in them. Based on this, if you cannot find some specific information, you can post your query in the Forum on this web page.

The Forum provides an opportunity for communication and discussion among CCLAC Members -- direct but not in real time. The coordination will publish a discussion issue, which this office itself may suggest or Members may put forward, and on which participants may comment on a voluntary basis. These views will be published immediately, without any filtering or regulation by the Coordination; and one after the other will be added under the posted issue.
Upon completion of the time set for the discussion, the issue will be filed as free consultation document.
Discussion of the topic may be continued by opening another forum page or through a personal chat with one or several members.
There may be different simultaneous discussion topics which authorized members will have access to and voluntarily participate in.

If you are a CCLAC Member, you will receive a user name and a personal password to participate in the Forum.
If you are not a Member but your country/organization has a specific interest, you may request the Coordination to let you participate. If authorized, you will receive a user name and password which will be valid for a given period.
Different members of the same country may have access to the forum with individual user names and passwords.

The chat is real time direct communication service. It contains a window where you can have a dialogue in writing with someone else.
Access will be restricted to Members or potential guests upon request by the interested country/organization and the interested person him/herself.

For safety purposes, errors in entering the chat will be restricted to three (3) times; after this, access with that user name will be blocked.
Upon a request in writing by the concerned participant, the server will re-authorize access and change the password, again restricting access to three errors.

In the "What's New?" section, information on incoming documents is frequently updated for consideration by Members. Thus, by regularly checking this section, you can learn about the documents that are being discussed.

If you go to the CCLAC Members menu, you will find a map with member countries. If you click on the country or if you look below the map on that same page, you will find updated contact details - where available.

You can go to the Site Map and see if you find what you need in the simplified web page outline. If the problem remains, you can post your query on the Forum, or else contact the CCLAC Coordination, codex@mecon.gov.ar.

The CCLAC web page does not contain a list with Codex approved standards. To find a standard, you should go to the Codex Alimentarius web page, www.codexalimentarius.net, and go to Official Standards, where you can find the complete list or search by standard. Or else, you can check the web page of the International Portal on Food Safety, Animal & Plant Health, www.ipfsaph.org. If you cannot find the information you need, you can consult the FAO/WHO.

Reports of the Commission, committees and task forces, recording the outcomes of meetings, and working documents prepared for Commission sessions are called ALINORMS.

These documents are identified with the term "ALINORM" followed by the calendar year in which the meeting is held, followed by the session number. This is then followed by the consecutive number of the document in line with the Commission agenda item. If there is more than one meeting of a particular committee between Commission sessions, the second session is identified with the letter "A" after the number.

For example, a document on the agenda of the Twenty-sixth Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (held in July 2003) would be identified as ALINORM 03/26/xx (xx being a consecutive number, starting at 1). As in the case of the documents related to agendas of subsidiary bodies, the number allocated is not necessarily the same number as the agenda item.

Each item of subsidiary bodies is presented in a working paper that is identified as follows: CX (abbreviation for Codex) followed by the acronym of the committee. These document identities are followed by two digits representing the specific year in which the session will be held, then the session number and finally the consecutive number of the document, for example CX/FH 05/37/3. In this case, CX = Codex, FH = Food Hygiene, 05 = 2005 (the year in which the session is being held), 37 = the Thirty-seventh Session of CCFH and 3 = the consecutive number allocated to the document for discussion on the agenda.

The consecutive number does not necessarily indicate the agenda item number, since discussion of some agenda items may require more than one document. On some occasions, a committee may have two or more meetings in the same Commission session period. In these cases, the letter "A" would follow the abbreviated year of the second meeting, to differentiate between the meetings.

If you want to check the references of Subsidiary Bodies, please go to the Committees section and then click on "Committee and Document Abbreviations".

Circular letters (CLs) provide the vehicle for communication from the Codex Secretariat to Codex member countries and interested international non-governmental organizations. When reports from committees (ALINORMS) are circulated, they always include a CL that invites Members and observers to provide comments on specific elements of the report - usually comments on draft text contained in the appendixes to the report. When a committee establishes an ad hoc working group, and the working group wishes to circulate its recommendations, this is normally done through a CL.

Circular letters are numbered consecutively, also indicating the calendar year and committee to which they pertain. For example, CL2001/24 - GP identifies the twenty-fourth circular letter for the calendar year 2001. This particular CL pertains to the Codex Committee on General Principles. CL2001/25 - FFP is the twenty-fifth CL for 2001, and pertains to an issue related to the Codex Committee on Fish and Fishery Products.

Conference room documents (CRDs) are documents that are circulated at a Codex session. CRDs are numbered consecutively, but normally have no other identities and may originate from a number of sources. The "LIM" (limited distribution) document series used in Commission sessions is equivalent to "CRD" in subsidiary bodies.

Where countries submit written comments in response to a CL or CX document, the Secretariat compiles all comments and circulates these prior to the meeting. These documents would have the appropriate CX designation. However, there are times when comments are received too late for translation and circulation to Member Governments. These would be circulated at the meeting itself as a CRD, and are given consecutive numbers by the Codex secretariat of the host government of the session as they are circulated within the committee.

We will do our best to compilet the CRDs and LIMs circulated at Codex sessions; this, however, will depend on the good will of those responsible for Codex meetings.