FIJI presented the Regional Kava Standard – Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) documents at Day Two of the 17th Session of the FAO/WHO Coordinating Committee for North America and the South West Pacific (CCNASWP), currently underway in Nadi.
According to a statement by the Fiji Government, Fiji, including other kava trading regions, had been pushing for the Kava Standard since 2015.
“In 2020, the region adopted the Regional Kava Standard and amended it in 2023 with regional endorsement during the CCNASWP16.
“The adoption of the standard in Step 5 has allowed the kava trading region to expand its kava trade.
“In 2023, the Codex Committee for Methods and Sampling Analysis (CCMAS) 42nd session highlighted a few outstanding issues and recommended that North America and the South West Pacific (NASWP) region revise the SOP and provide descriptions of how the final determination is to be made.
“With these, the Regional Coordinator has been tasked with providing a revised SOP to be submitted and presented in the upcoming CCMAS meeting in May 2025.
“The revised SOP was presented in the morning session, and in the meeting, Fiji together with other regional CCNASWP members, have come to a consensus to have the initial SOP replenished to a more simple and affordable kava testing using a qualitative assessment of kava nobility using a colorimetric UV acetone extract method,” the Fiji Government stated.
With advice from the Codex secretariat, CCNASWP17 chairperson and Permanent Secretary Agriculture Dr Andrew Tukana welcomed the proposed changes in the SOP and advised regional members to complete and amend the document before submitting it to the Codex Secretariat in March 2025 for their further review.
According to the Codex Allimentarius Commission’s report on CCNASWP17 ‘s Day 2 agenda, CCMAS42 did not endorse the revised SOP due to the lack of description of how the final determination is to be made, and requested CCNASWP to provide further edits to address the lack of instruction on the final determination steps and assessment against a specification.
“Fiji, in addressing the request of CCMAS42, proposes that the SOP be revised such that a qualitative assessment for kava nobility is conducted based on the UV absorbance reading of kava acetonic extract, scanned at 440nm using a simple colorimeter (see Annex of this document).
“The objective of the revised SOP is to provide more instruction on the final determination steps.
“CCNASWP17 is invited to review the the revised SOP as contained in the Annex and consider forwarding it to CCMAS44 for endorsement.”
According to the Fiji Government, the NASWP region will continue developing its Regional Kava Standard SOP to access new markets.
