In 1962 the governing bodies of FAO and WHO approved the establishment of a joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme, the creation of a jointly sponsored body to be known as the Codex Alimentarius commission to implement the Programme. It can reasonably be claimed that the Commission has assumad the leading role in establishing internation food standards throughout the world. The Codex Committee of Food Hygiene has received much advice and assistance from other international organization which have been working in this field for a number of years. In particular, it has received valuable background documentation from the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods(ICMSF) which was set up by the International Association of Microbiological Societies(IAMS), and also from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Nevertheless, in spite of the information supplied by governments and research bodies in this field, microbiological standards have proved to be a highly controversial subject from the point of view of Codex standards. When it is decided to establish a microbiological standard for a food or class of foods, the following technical and administrative aspects must be considered: 1) The standard should be based on factual studies and serve one or more of the following objectives: (1) to determine the conditions of hygiene under which the food should be manufactured; (2) to minimize the hazards to public health; (3) to measure the keeping quality and storage potential of the food 2) The standard should be attainable under practicable operating and commercial conditions and should not entail the use of excessive heat treatment or the additions of extra preservatives. 3) The standard should be determined after investigation of the processing operation. 4) The standard should be as simple and inexpensive to administer as possible, the number of tests being kept to a minimum. 5) Details of methods to be used for sampling, examining and reporting should accompany all published microbiological standards. 6) In establishing tolerance levels for the permissible number of defective samples, allowance should be made for sampling and other variations due to differences in the laboratory methods. The following additional points should be kept in mind: 1) It is not satisfactory to establish one set of microbiological standards for a miscellaneous group of foods, such as“frozen foods”or“precooked foods”. 2) Microbiological standards should be applied first to the more hazardous types of food on the basis of experience of expected microbiological levels, taking into account variations in composition, processing procedures, and storage. 3) When a standard is established, there should be a definite relationship between the standard and the hazard against which it is meant to protect the public. 4) The sensitivity, reliability, and reproducibility of the sampling and analytical methods should be compared in different laboratories and the methods to be used should be specified in detail as part of the standard. 5) Tolerances should be included in the standard to account for inaccuracies of sampling and analysis. 6) Standards should be applied on a voluntary basis before compliance is made mandatory.