Protecting health, facilitating trade, or both?
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has existed and dealt with trade issues since 1947. However, to take on the question of to what extent can we set fair and science-based rules allowing countries to have the sovereign right to set measures for protecting public, animal and plant health and food safety, while not creating unjustified barriers to trade was the challenge of the Uruguay Round negotiators. The outcome of this seven-year exercise was the SPS Agreement discussed here. A number of key issues are addressed: transparency including notification, special and differential treatment for developing countries, harmonization, equivalence, regionalization, risk analysis, and other matters. Early warning and exposure of these issues has encouraged countries to resolve their problems quickly. Some of the issues that should be taken into consideration during this next round are the following: biotechnology, aquaculture, consumer concerns, animal welfare, the environment, organic foods, morality in trade, compliance with the WTO, compensation, and the precautionary principle. Compliance with the decision of the WTO is an area of grave concern, especially if developed and powerful countries continue to threaten the survival of the WTO system through lengthy and costly legal interpretations and appeals of dispute settlements without serious efforts by all parties to find win-win solutions. In spite of these problems, over all we must recognize the significant gains in trade thanks to the SPS Agreement. The most flagrant trade violations have been eliminated as a result of improved transparency in the process. Consumers are in general better off, since they have greater diversity and increased safety in what they can buy.