Issue: There were substantial new developments in food

safety regulation in many countries during the past decade,

including new and more stringent standards for many hazards. Some new regulatory developments may mitigate

potential barriers to trade, while others may hinder trade.

In 1995, members of the World Trade Organization

(WTO) agreed on a set of multilateral rules that would

recognize the legitimate need for countries to adopt sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations while establishing a framework to reduce their trade-distorting aspects.

Under these rules, WTO members have reported numerous

complaints related to food safety regulations. Resolving

these conflicts is one of the biggest challenges facing the

international trade system. A perceived failure to accommodate legitimate differences in food regulations could

increase opposition to trade liberalization in general. 

Background: New approaches to food safety regulation

emerged in industrialized countries during the 1990s following changes in science, markets, and consumer awareness (see box). The most significant trends include the

growing use of scientific risk analysis as a basis for food

regulation and the adoption of the Hazard Analysis and

Critical Control Point (HACCP) system as a basis for new

regulation, often of microbial pathogens in food. 

These new regulatory trends have several implications for

how food safety standards affect international trade. For

example, new kinds of regulation or public intervention

that focus on voluntary information provision (e.g., provision of certification for certain kinds of production practices) can facilitate trade, even when standards and requirements differ among countries. Other food safety trends can

impede trade. For example, where new process standards

set out requirements for how a food is produced, it can be

difficult to determine if imported products are as safe as

those produced domestically. Whether certain kinds of

process requirements are necessary or sufficient to achieve

an equivalent risk outcome can be subject to dispute. 

Coincident with these trends in regulation, WTO members

negotiated an Agreement on the Application of Sanitary

and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) to provide a

framework for determining the legitimacy of SPS measures that restrict trade and for resolving potential trade

conflicts. The SPS Agreement requires members to notify

the WTO of proposed changes in regulations. This enables

trading partners to raise questions or objections to the notified changes. These complaints provide some evidence of

the extent to which new food safety regulations have created barriers to trade. 

United States

Department of

Agriculture

Economic 

Research

Service

Issues in Diet, Safety, and Health / Agriculture Information Bulletin Number 789-3 February 2004

Resolving Trade Disputes

Arising from Trends in Food

Safety Regulation

The Role of the Multilateral

Governance Framework

Donna Roberts, droberts@ers.usda.gov, (202) 694-5262

Laurian Unnevehr, laurian@uiuc.edu, University of Illinois

Trends in food safety regulation in industrialized

countries in the 1990s

 The growing use of risk analysis,

 Having public health as the primary goal of food 

safety regulation,

 Recognizing that a farm-to-table approach is often

desirable for addressing food safety hazards,

 Adopting the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control

Point (HACCP) system as a basis for new regulation

often of microbial pathogens in food,

 Increasing the stringency of standards for many food

safety hazards,

 Adding new and more extensive regulation to handle

newly identified hazards, and

 Improving market performance in food safety through

provision of information to consumers.
2 Economic Research Service / USDA

Resolving Trade Disputes Arising from Trends in Food Safety Regulation / AIB-789-3

Findings: WTO members submitted more than 2,400 SPS

notifications to the WTO between 1995 and 2001. WTO

members have taken advantage of this notification process,

registering 187 complaints in the SPS Committee since

1995. More than half of these complaints (108) were related

to human health measures, including both food and animal

feed regulations. Developed countries were most often the

source (68 percent) as well as the target (67 percent) of complaints that identified these regulations as trade impediments.

The commodity/hazard sources for complaints provide

some insight into tensions over regulations in international

agricultural markets (see table). Complaints related to the

regulation of encephalopathies, primarily bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), accounted for nearly half of

the objections to food safety regulations since 1995, indicating the significant disruption to international trade

caused by BSE outbreaks. BSE outbreaks account for the

high number of complaints related to animal products. 

WTO members have averted, diffused, and resolved a

number of food-safety-related disputes under the terms of

the SPS Agreement since 1995. The Agreement’s requirement that measures be based on scientific risk assessment

has been key. However, a few disputes remain unresolved

because of disagreement over the role that other factors,

such as animal welfare, should play in food safety policies. WTO members have occasionally been successful in

lowering the transaction costs of trade through agreements

that recognize the equivalence of trading partners’ measures and adoption of international standards. More widespread use of equivalence agreements is hampered by their

significant administrative burden. The impact of international standards on trade has been limited by the lack of

up-to-date standards in some cases. The generality of

some international standards, which allows a number of

different national approaches to implementing them, also

limits their impact on trade. The WTO and other institutions continue to work on an array of projects, such as

identifying priorities for technical assistance for developing countries, that can help countries satisfy the food safety objectives of importing countries while increasing trade.

Information Source:

Roberts, D., and L. Unnevehr. “Resolving Trade Disputes

Arising from Trends in Food Safety Regulation: The Role

of Multilateral Governance Framework,” chapter 3 in

International Trade and Food Safety: Economic Theory

and Case Studies. J. Buzby (ed.). USDA, Econ. Res. Serv.,

AER-828, Nov. 2003. www.ers.usda.gov/publications/

aer828/

Distribution of complaints related to human health measures in the WTO’s SPS Committee, 1995 - 20011

Complaints against measures regulating:

Food Foodborne Toxins and Veterinary Pesticide 

Commodity TSEs2 additives pathogens heavy metals residues residues Other3 Total

Multiple animal products 44 — — 8 — — — 52

Meat and meat products 4 — 8 2 2 — — 16

Multiple agricultural products — 1 — 13 — — 2 16

Dairy/eggs — — 6 1 — — 2 9

Processed products — — — 5 — 1 3 9

Feedstuffs 2 — — 1 2 — — 5

Horticultural products — — — — — 1 — 1

Cereals — — — — — — — 0

Total 50 1 14 30 4 2 7 108

1Entries exclude “repeat interventions” made by WTO members who registered complaints against the same measure more than once.

2Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) include bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

3Complaints related to measures that regulated multiple hazards or genetically modified products, or had unknown objectives.

Source: WTO Summaries of the Meetings of the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, G/SPS/R series, 1995-01 and authors’

calculation.

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