International reporting of adverse drug reactions by pharmaceutical manufacturers to national drug regulatory authorities requires internationally accepted standard definitions of reactions and criteria for assessment of causality. The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) undertook a pilot project to prepare such definitions and criteria, and proposed to use as its model a series of expert consensus meetings organized in France by the pharmaceutical company, Roussel Uclaf, with the participation of the official French network of pharmacovigilance. Under CIOMS auspices, an international meeting was organized to test the feasibility of adapting for international use the outcome of the French consensus meetings on drug-induced liver disorders. The meeting resulted in a series of proposed standard designations of drug-induced liver disorders and criteria of causality assessment.