Trade in Food

Description

Trade in Food systematises and illustrates the evolution of the European Community s regulation of food within the broader framework set out by the WTO Agreements. Its main purpose is to provide readers keen to deepen their knowledge of the field with easy access to the EC and WTO food laws accompanied by a critical explanation and commentary. The book is well-suited to legal practitioners, judges, policy-makers, officials of international organisations, national civil servants, academics, research institutions and consumer groups who want to acquire or enhance their knowledge in this growing field of law. This book is also useful to post graduate students of international trade law and policy, international and European economic law, global administrative law and risk regulation. The foreword for this book is written by Professor Giorgio Sacerdoti, Member of the WTO Appellate Body and Jean Monnet Professor at Bocconi University, Milan.

First Sentence

Foreword This book deals with a crucial matter in the ongoing debate as to the relationship between the regulatory competence of States in the furtherance of domestic policies of general interest and concern, such as food safety, and the preservation of a liberal international trade framework. The negotiators of the Uruguay Round have addressed these concerns through the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS) which covers new grounds hitherto not regulated internationally. The SPS Agreement provides for a regime where non-trade concerns and responsibilities of governments as to food products are fully legitimised, even if this results in restrictions to trade, provided that there is no discrimination and that a risk assessment is conducted so that food safety measures be science-based. A distinct feature of the SPS Agreement is that it is not limited to prescribing minimum standards; it sets instead detailed rules as to national SPS measures covered, the goals that may be legitimately pursued through them and requirements of the proceedings (“risk assessment”) that must be carried out as a necessary underpinning of any restriction to trade in a given food product. This global framework has been adopted at a time when more and more countries have enacted and are progressively enacting domestic risk regulations and are setting up specialized agencies to carry out the necessary investigations and controls. A prominent example of this evolution is offered by the European Union, the main focus of this book. The starting point of the analysis of Alberto Alemanno is the evolution of food regulation in the EC and the establishment, role and activities of the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) which is the cornerstone of the new food safety policy of the European Community. EFSA is a relative new institution, still not well known even by experts, and whose organization and efficiency is subject to conflicting evaluations. In this context Alberto Alemanno points to its modest responsibilities compared to the pivotal role attributed to the Food & Drug Administration in the U.S. I would like to stress here the original approach followed by Alberto Alemanno in his analysis throughout his book. In comparable investigations authors tend to follow one of two approaches. The first one is to highlight a certain national regulation within the domestic system concerned and thereafter examine its compatibility with relevant international regulation taking into account domestic implementation. The opposite approach is to highlight a given international regulation, including the limitations and requirements it imposes on member countries, in order to test thereafter whether a given national regime is in compliance with the applicable international obligations. Alberto avoids both approaches. He considers the SPS Agreement not just as a set of prescriptions for WTO Member States, but as a food safety regime of its own, against which a national system such as the European one may not only be tested in order to detect resulting limitations and possible conflicts, but to which it may be compared with a view to analyzing divergence or convergence of the two regimes. This original approach is justified by the comprehensiveness of the SPS Agreement, which relies moreover on various international standards as an indirect tool for harmonizing national regulations in certain respects. Alberto Alemanno also approaches, in an innovative way, the issue of judicial review of food safety measures in the EC and in the WTO, focusing on the different intensity of the respective reviews and the problems that judges face when reviewing science-based measures. According to the Author, the scientifically intrusive standard of review which tends to be applied within by the WTO judicial bodies is due to the fact that the WTO Agreements do not deal with risk management, and to the different normative and institutional contexts. Of course, while the focus of the WTO is on minimizing the negative impact of legitimate SPS measures on international trade and thus on restraining governmental policies, the EC aims at protecting the health of the consumer from potentially hazardous food product within the unified internal market. The book offers thus an innovative contribution to the relationship between the WTO and EC regimes both as to substance in the area of ensuring food safety, while taking into account the role of science and precaution, and as to the implications of the respective judicial review mechanisms in a broad comparative perspective. Thanks to his multifaceted legal background in international, U.S. and European law and his daily experience at the European Court of Justice, the Author has succeeded in mastering the various challenges, so as to offer a comprehensive piece of research which is at the same time informative and provocative. Indeed, by examining WTO law through the lenses of the experience of the major domestic regulatory systems, he injects into his evaluation an element of realism often lacking in those scholars who are more prone to detecting conflicts than engaged in trying to reconcile differences. Giorgio Sacerdoti Professor of International Law and Jean Monnet Chair of European Law, Bocconi University Member of the WTO Appellate Body Milan/Geneva, October 2006

Subjects