number of complaints which have been recorded in the SPS Committee. Both are seen as incomplete yet useful proxies for the trade inhibiting effects of food safety and agricultural health standards and each is discussed in turn below.

# **6.1 Border detentions and rejections of agricultural and food products**

For a limited number of countries, information is made available (through periodic reports and web-based databases) on the incidence of detention or rejection of imported agricultural and food products on the basis of problems associated with quality, safety, labeling or other technical issues. The most widely available and cited data are for the United States and European Union. While there have been changes in the classification of data over time, researchers are able to use that data which is available to obtain a reasonable picture of the incidence of product rejections over time and by product and country of origin. However, it is only possible to track the incidence of detention/rejection event. Neither the data available for the United States or European Union specify the volume or value of rejected consignments.

There are interesting similarities and differences between the product rejection data for the European Union and United States.<sup>24</sup> Amongst the most notable are:

- _Rising incidence_ : With regard to both the United States and European Union there has been a very large increase in the number of detentions in the past several years.  In the European Union, for example, the number of notifications/alerts increased more than sixfold between 1998 (230 cases) and 2002 (1520)<sup>25</sup> This increased incidence of rejections reflects a combination of factors including the tightening and/or harmonization of standards, application of new standards for hazards formerly unregulated and (perhaps most significantly) substantially increased capacities for inspection/enforcement.  With regard to the U.S., between 2001 and 2003 there was a six-fold increase in the number of product inspections undertaken by the FDA in the United States, in part due to heightened concern about bioterrorism.<sup>26</sup>

- _Product concentration_ : In both cases the vast majority of detentions/rejections occurred for a few product categories, namely fish/crustaceans, meat products and fruits and vegetables.  For the European Union, there was also a high incidence of rejections for nuts, while for the United States there were many rejections of low-acid canned foods.  In both cases, fish products experienced the highest incidence of rejections. For example, fish accounted for 35 percent of all rejections in 2002.  There were comparatively very

> 24 Data for the United States can be found at www.fda.gov/ora/oasis/ora_oasis_ref.html, and for the European Union at www.europa.eu.int/comm/food/fs/sfp/ras_index_en.html.

> 25 The FDA data exclude certain agricultural and food products for which the FDA has no jurisdiction, most notably meat and poultry.  Until 2002 these data referred to border detentions regardless of whether the product was eventually permitted to enter.  Since that time, however, they have recorded border rejections.  The European Union has only made available disaggregated data on import alerts since 2002, although annual reports with broad summary statistics were published previously.

> 26 Between 2002 and 2003 the number of ports where the FDA has assigned inspection staff increased from 40 to 90. Over this period, a $96 million increase in the FDA’s budget for food security work enabled it to hire 655 new field personnel. In the Bush Administration’s proposed 2005 budget the FDA would receive a 9 percent increase in funding to expand its ‘food defense” program. The fiscal 2005 budget calls for 97,000 import inspections, a figure which is seven times that undertaken in 2001. Similarly large increases were proposed for the Department of Agriculture’s work on food safety.

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