The United Nations committee on food safety, the Codex Alimentarius, is currently meeting in Quebec City to discuss genetically modified food labelling.

To understand more about the Codex, I tracked down their mission, in a document about their purpose on the Codex's website. This is what it had to say:

While the Codex Alimentarius as it stands
is a remarkable achievement, it would be
quite wrong to see it as the only product
of the Codex Alimentarius Commission,
although it is the most important.
Resulting from the creation of the Codex,
another major accomplishment has been
to sensitize the global community to the
danger of food hazards as well as to the
importance of food quality and hence to
the need for food standards.
By providing an international focal
point and forum for informed dialogue
on issues relevant to food, the Codex
Alimentarius Commission fulfils a
crucial role. In support of its work on
food standards and codes of practice,
it generates reputable texts for the
management of food safety and consumer
protection based on the work of the best informed
individuals and organizations
concerned with food and related fields.
Countries have responded by introducing
long-overdue food legislation and Codex based
standards and by establishing or
strengthening food control agencies to
monitor compliance with such regulations.

Genetically modifed food labelling advocates have long been clamouring for a positive stance on their concerns at this meeting. There is very little media coverage about it, so it is hard to know what is transpiring, but I imagine that the meeting will ultimately report upon its accomplishments in a document format. Given the difficulty mainstream media seems to be having in having reporters present for Omar Khadr's trial, it is perhaps not surprising that they have not managed to assign anyone to this key event. If I owned a news service, someone would be covering this summit- and that's all I have to say about that :)