FIVS Regulatory Principles
Regulatory Principles to Enhance Coherence and to Facilitate Trade in Wine Adopted by FIVS in 2013
In 2013, the members of FIVS endorsed by consensus a set of good regulatory practice principles for wine. It was a ground-breaking piece of work, with the potential to have significant trade-facilitating impacts. After considering these principles, the governments of the World Wine Trade Group (WWTG) endorsed a slightly modified, but similar set in its “Tbilisi Statement” of 2014. Within a few months, members of the FIVS Scientific and Technical Committee, working independently and also in conjunction with participants of the International Wine Technical Summit (IWTS), began producing a series of technical documents related to several of the Principles to illustrate how practical application might occur. Some of these papers have been presented at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation’s (APEC) Wine Regulatory Forum (WRF) and one of them (on the microbiological safety of wine) has been endorsed by the governments of the WWTG. In addition, to increase familiarity with the concepts involved, the principles were presented at the International Organisation of Vine and Wine’s (OIV) Congress in Argentina in 2014, and three of the implementation papers have been presented at the OIV Scientific Congress over the last few years (see specific links below).
We are happy to report this activity is ongoing. FIVS has already agreed on a second set of principles and some of these are under consideration and gradually being endorsed by several governments. Further technical implementation papers are being produced by the FIVS Scientific and Technical Committee for consideration within the IWTS. Accordingly, we envisage that this tool will be regularly updated and will comprise a more and more significant body of work on the sound regulation of wine from a technical perspective.
FIVS Regulatory Principles
Principle #1: Avoid the establishment of limits that stimulate costly and unnecessary analyses.
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FIVS Paper on Regulating Winemaking Practice Additions in a Rapidly Evolving, Global Market
(Also published here as a Codex Committee on Food Additives Conference Room Document)
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FIVS-WWTG-IWTS Paper: Microbiologically, Wine is a Low Food Safety Risk Consumer Product
(Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation [or PDF])
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FIVS Paper on Certificates of Analysis and Wine Authenticity
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FIVS Paper on Certificates of Analysis and Wine Safety
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FIVS Paper on Methanol in Wine
(Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation [or PDF])
Principle #2: Harmonize limits where there is no scientific justification for national or regional differences.
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APEC WRF FIVS-Abridge Access Project
The APEC WRF comprises government officials and stakeholders from 21 economies in the Pacific Rim region. FIVS-Abridge serves as a repository for the APEC WRF Compendia of Regulations on Export Certification, Food Safety, and Labelling.
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WWTG FIVS-Abridge Access Project
FIVS-Abridge also serves as a regulatory repository for the World Wine Trade Group (WWTG), a group of government and industry representatives from nine wine-producing countries.
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IWTS FIVS-Abridge Access Project
FIVS-Abridge also serves as a regulatory repository for the International Wine Technical Summit (IWTS), a collaborative group of government and industry representatives who have an understanding of the technical issues surrounding wine production and trade, and work with the aim of trade facilitation.
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FIVS-APACE (Additives and Processing Aid Compendium for Enology)
FIVS-APACE is made available to government officials from APEC and WWTG, in addition to other authorities contemplating revision to their food-additive regulations relating to wine.
Principle #3: Give due regard to intergovernmental agreements and work done by other authorities when establishing new regulatory limits.
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Provision of FIVS-Abridge to 23 governments of APEC and WWTG
See above for information about FIVS-Abridge
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IWTS FIVS-Abridge Access Project
FIVS-Abridge also serves as a regulatory repository for the International Wine Technical Summit (IWTS), a collaborative group of government and industry representatives who have an understanding of the technical issues surrounding wine production and trade, and work with the aim of trade facilitation.
Principle #4: Adopt a common system of scientific units for expressing regulatory limits.
Principle #5: Express regulatory limits on a “per unit volume of wine” basis rather than “per unit volume of alcohol” in the wine.
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FIVS Paper on Methanol in Wine
(Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation [or PDF])
Principle #6: Adopt a common way of expressing results where this is done in relation to a single wine constituent (e.g. for Total Acidity expressed in terms of one specific acid).
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FIVS-IWTS Paper: Harmonizing Expression of Measurement Results in Wine Analysis: Testing for Total or Titratable Acidity (TA) of Wine
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FIVS-IWTS Paper: Harmonizing Expression of Measurement Results in Wine Analysis: Best Practices When Testing and Reporting Sugar in Wine
(Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation [or PDF])
Principle #7: Consider the establishment of analytical “de minimis” values for substances or classes of substances in wine – values below which they will be deemed to all intents and purposes not to be present in the wine.
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Introduction by the government of New Zealand within Codex Alimentarius of discussion on the “Threshold of Toxicological Concern” (TTC) approach
Principle #8: Allow suitable transition arrangements when limits are tightened, provided public health considerations so permit, and exempt wine from the requirement to be labelled with an expiration date.
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Already a WTO requirement, adequate transition arrangements are strongly encouraged by FIVS members
Principle #9: Analyses of wine for compliance purposes should be undertaken by suitably accredited laboratories (or overseen by certified analysts) that perform acceptably for the specific test methods used.
Principle #10: Analytical methods used for wine compliance purposes should be validated and/or have a demonstrably appropriate level of performance for wine.
Principle #11: For wine authenticity analyses, the database of authentic samples with which the test samples will be compared must be sufficiently comprehensive to avoid the miscategorization of legitimate samples as fraudulent.
Principle #12: Laboratories testing for compliance purposes should supply measurement uncertainty information with their analytical results and the competent authorities should take this into account in interpreting analytical data.
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FIVS Paper on Certificates of Analysis and Wine Safety
(Refer to Section “5. When Laboratory Results Do Not Agree”)