Page 34 - Trade and Food Standards

placing an issue of national interest onto Codex’s international agenda. Throughout, the section underscores the need for a multisectoral approach, starting at the grassroots level, and demonstrates how engagement in one branch of the system can yield benefits in the other.
Effective preparation and multisectoral consultation and coordination are challenging, requiring technical and institutional capacities that need to be developed and maintained. The section will conclude with case studies and global success stories where FAO has implemented capacity- development programmes. These examples demonstrate that targeted, informed and coordinated investments can bring benefits in terms of the impact standards make when they are applied, and the positive effects this can have on market access for food.
The WTO SPS and TBT Committees in action
Food standards have always mattered for trade, and their importance is growing. At the WTO, in the SPS and TBT Committees, members monitor the trade impact of food safety and other food- related measures. They also discuss experiences and best practices in implementing the SPS and TBT Agreements, and develop procedures and guidance to assist members. This work shows, in particular, the importance of harmonized, science- based food standards in facilitating trade. Under this framework, members use notifications2 to indicate their intention to introduce new or modified measures. If a measure affects trade or has the potential to do so, members can raise their concerns in a meeting. Such trade and market access issues are termed Specific Trade Concerns (STCs).
Notifications
Measures related to food safety are most noticeable, but those dealing with other aspects of food (including non-SPS health risks) – such as labelling or quality – are also growing in number.
At the WTO, in the SPS and TBT Committees, members monitor the trade impact of food safety and other food- related measures. They also discuss experiences and best practices in implementing the SPS and TBT Agreements, and develop procedures and guidance to assist members.
The share of regular SPS notifications that relate to food safety measures has, overall, increased over the years, from 44 percent in 2007 to 74 percent in 2016. The share of notifications specifically referencing a Codex standard roughly tripled over the same period (see Figure 1).3
Food issues, though less prevalent in TBT notifications since the Committee deals with measures on all goods, have gained in prominence there too: only 14 percent of TBT notifications submitted in 2007 related to food measures, while this figure reached 28 percent in 2016, following a peak in 2014. In the same period, the share of TBT notifications referencing Codex rose from
1 percent to 5 percent.
It is not surprising that notifications of food safety measures affecting trade very frequently reference Codex standards, since the SPS Agreement explicitly recognizes Codex as the international standard-setting body for food safety matters.
3 In the SPS context, “other notifications” refer to animal or plant health measures, whereas in the TBT context they refer to a wide range of products and subject matters.
2
Although there is no obligation to notify SPS regulations
that are substantially the same as an international standard, in 2008 the SPS Committee recommended that members
do so anyway since this information could be useful for trading partners. Therefore, when members notify a measure referencing a Codex standards, they can additionally indicate whether it meets that standard.
22 Trade and food standards