On June 25 – 27, 2014, USDA and Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) co-hosted the Codex Colloquium for Asia in Tokyo, Japan. The meeting brought together over fifty participants from Codex member nations from across Asia, in addition to the United States, to discuss and learn about food safety regulatory issues and the functions and operations of Codex in advance of the July meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in Switzerland. Codex standards are increasingly important as countries seek to minimize unwarranted non-tariff barriers to trade. MAFF’s proactive efforts to host and coordinate this event may be a positive sign in Japan’s willingness to work with food safety standards based on sound-science.