The SPS Agreement and Agri-food Trade Disputes: The Final Frontier

Grant E. Isaac

Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, 2004, vol. 05, issue 01, 13

Abstract: Without modification, the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) will become the battleground for many complex agricultural trade disputes. There are two interrelated reasons for this. The first reason is that the agreement confers on members considerable unilateral power to implement unchallengeable market access barriers to agri-food imports, provided those members have a legitimate justification to do so. The second reason is that much ambiguity continues to exist regarding what properly constitutes a legitimate justification. Therefore, modifications to the SPS Agreement are required to fully characterize a legitimate justification, thus ensuring that SPS-related market access barriers will be wielded in a manner consistent with ensuring public health while preventing unnecessary trade distortion.

Keywords: International; Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/23847/files/05010043.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ecjilt:23847

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.23847

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy from Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().