As the various rounds of talks under WTO have shown the major issue raised by both — developed and the developing countries — is related to the market access.

There is a considerable decrease of tariff rates as a result of negotiations under different rounds of GATT and WTO. However, the perception still exits in the developing world that they are not given market access especially in agriculture-related and labour-intensive goods where developing countries may enjoy some competitive advantage. In these circumstances, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures may be increasingly used by the developed countries in order to restrict market access.

The SPS measures are laws/regulations and procedures adopted by countries to protect human, animal or plant lift or health. Sanitary refers to human and animal life and phytosanitary to plant life or health. SPS measures can be categorised in plant and animal health measures, food safety measures and multi-purpose measures.

Plant and animal health measures protect plants and animals from risks arising from pests, diseases, disease-causing organisms, feed additives, toxins, and pesticides. Seasonal and regional restrictions on the import of Mexican avocados are pertinent example of this category of measures.

Food safety measures are meant to protect human life and health from risks arising from food-borne pathogens / contaminants, pesticide residues, additives, veterinary residues, naturally occurring toxins and transgenic diseases. Examples would include `maximum residue’ limits for pesticides on produce or veterinary drugs in mead products.

Some SPS measures are multi-purpose, while others cross food-plant-animal boundaries. For example, food-borne pathogens can affect human, animal health. Therefore cooking requirements for beef exported from a country with foot and mouth disease (FMD) could prevent introduction of the disease into a country without the disease.

SPS agreement under WTO regime seeks to ensure that SPS measures don’t result in unnecessary barriers to international trade by requiring that countries maintain them on the basis of scientific risk assessment. In the backdrop of downward pressure on international trade tariffs and agricultural subsidies resulting from the 1994 conclusion of the Uruguay Round of the GATT, it is likely that SPS measures would be a growing area of trade disputes as countries seek to protect their agricultural producers from international competition. An SPS restriction can be a very effective protectionist device and can be a deceptive and difficult barrier to challenge because of its technical complexity.

The agreement on the application of the SPS measures embodies dual objective. It recognises the right of member countries to adopt and enforce sanitary measures while ensuring that they are neither arbitrary nor unjustifiable restrictions on international trade. The agreement seeks to accomplish its dual objective in three ways:

• It encourages WTO member countries to base their sanitary measures on international standards, guidelines/recommendations, where they exist (Article 3.1). For food safety, members are to base their measures on the standards, guidelines and recommendations of the codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC).

• If CAC standards do not exist, or if members desire and adopt measures which result in a higher level of health protection than would be achieved by measures based on the relevant CAC standards; Article 5.1 commits members to base their measures on risk assessment. The members themselves have to decide what will be their appropriate levels of health protection, but these levels and the sanitary measures adopted to achieve them must be consistently applied, non- discriminatory and not more trade restrictive than necessary.

• Finally, the Article 4 of SPS agreement under WTO commits importing members to accept as equivalent the sanitary measures of exporting members if the exporting member objectively demonstrates that its sanitary measures achieve the importer’s required level of health protection. These provisions i.e. reliance on existing international standards, requirement for risk assessment and provision for equivalent sanitary measures are collectively referred to as “WTO – SPS Framework”. The agreement acknowledges the legitimate use of SPS measures to restrict trade to protect against risks to human, animal and plant health. These measures are often applied on the basis of bilateral agreement or protocols.

The agreement on the application of these measures is highly important and involves a lot of technicalities as regards its implementation. It can act as a non-tariff barrier to trade. It has got serious implications, especially for developing countries. Developing countries fear that highest standards required by developed countries may be used as non-tariff barriers leading to restricted market access and the loss of competitive advantage.

Many cases are known where procedures in developing countries, especially SMEs, have faced difficulties in adapting to SPS requirements mainly due to financial or know-how constraints. Several import bans have been imposed temporarily on exports of agricultural products from developing countries based on non-compliance with SPS measures. Examples include shrimp imports from South Asia or fish from Kenya and Tanzania. In all three cases, imposition of a sudden ban resulted in great losses of export revenues and increasing unemployment in the sector.

In the case of Bangladesh, the EU imposed a ban on their shrimp exports because the processing plants did not comply with Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). Quality problems arise at the stage of producing raw shrimp (harvesting, sorting by size and colour) and at certain processing stages like removal of heads and peeling which are carried out under unhygienic conditions, at the absence of high quality water and ice, irregular electricity supply and poor infrastructure including transportation. The revenue losses due to the ban were estimated to amount to $65 million for Bangladesh and unemployment increased. In Tanzania, a first import ban was imposed on their fish exports by the EU during January and July 1998 because of a cholera epidemic. The second ban was imposed in late March 1999 for 10 months because of fish poisoning. After that, the government became aware of its role of monitoring and regulating, and also the performance of the standards institution improved.

A case study to quantify the trade effect of European food safety standards on African exports conducted by Development Research Group of the World Bank suggests that cost of regulatory intervention by any nation with the intent to protect human health can be significant. If increasingly restrictive sanitary and phytosanitary measures limit market access, these countries may incur significant export losses. The results of the study further suggest that cereals, dried fruits and edible nuts trade are negatively affected by aflatoxins standard in Europe before the new European Commission’s harmonisation of the aflatoxins standards.

A part of the problem in many developing countries is that the implementation of the SPS and the TBT agreement is poorly monitored, and adaptation to new requirements is very slow. Also the acceptance of key principles like equivalence and mutual recognition is lacking among WTO member countries. These principles encourage countries to accept each others SPS measures and conformity assessment procedures which differ regionally as equivalent. However, many developed countries are looking for “sameness” instead of “equivalency”. For developing countries, this may easily restrict market access for their products.

It is imperative that the developing countries raise these issues at WTO forum for setting up concrete and transparent equivalence standards so that SPS measures do not distort trade. The developed countries need to impart assistance to the developing countries in the areas of capacity building and processes rather than restricting market access under the garb of sanitary and phytosanitary measures.