A U.N. food commission has adopted a new standard for the production and handling of powdered infant formula in a bid to prevent diseases in young children, health officials said Wednesday, according to AP. The benchmark, adopted by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, contains a series of measures for powdered baby formula to reduce the risk of contamination from a bacteria that can lead to serious illness, said Peter Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist with the World Health Organization. A few years ago when babies became ill and even died because infant formula in developing countries was contaminated or was mixed with dirty water, it became clear that some products were unsafe, he said. In China, for example, a producer in 2005 put too little nutritional value in an infant formula, leaving children malnourished and killing some of them. The new standard includes recommendations for parents and caretakers on how to prepare the bottles for babies and how to safely store them, Embarek said. «If you don't store the bottles properly, then you allow growth of these bacteria and the recontamination of the powder and therefore increase the risk of having this infection at the end,» he said. The codex commission, which has 174 member countries plus the European Union, adopted the standard during its annual meeting held this week in Geneva.
