On The Influence "SPS Agreement" Of WTO Members Food Safety Standards

With the sustained growth of the international trade and constant deepening ofthe cross-border of goods, the effect of food security issue has evolved into asupranational one. Without any doubt, as an international treaty specialized in sanitaryand phytosanitary, SPS Agreement will affect WTO members’ food security standards.In international trade, due to the relationship of food import and export with humanheath, members usually choose to set threshold for food importation, in the hope ofstrengthening its food security regulations and protecting human, animal or plant lifeor health. Confronted with the ever increasing of trade disputes in the field of sanitaryand phytosanitary, many countries’food producers paymore attention on whethertheirexported products will be subjected to SPS measures. Importing countries mayclaim repeatedly that their SPS measures are introduced to guarantee food securityand human, animal or plant life or health, however, to individual exporters, importingcountry’s real purpose is protectionism, namely to protect domestic producers ratherthan consumers’ food security. Hereby, the key issue is whether the introduction of themeasure is due to real potential risk or disguised protectionism.Since China’saccession to WTO, several food security incidents took place, suchas melamine, poisonous dumplings and gutter oil, a number of WTO members-US,Japan,EU etc.-improved their market access standards for Chinese agricultureproducts successively. According to the official data,during the second half of2013,more than a dozen of products, such as Chinese litchi, fresh shrimp, frozen shrimp,burdock, processed beans, tea, strawberry, noodles, brassica oleracea, pomelo, eel etc.were restricted or forbidden by SPS measures of Korea, Japan, Dominica, EU. It is inthe background of deepened international trade and highlighted food security issuethat the poultry dispute between China and US took place.In this case, according to US, there were ceaseless food security scandals andcontinually deteriorating food security situation in China. Accordingly, US restrictedimports of Chinese poultry unilaterally since2007, and through annual appropriationact, Food Safety and Inspection Service(FSIS) was restricted to use any fundsachieved from United States Congress appropriation act to establish or implementrules that allow the importation of poultry products from China. Due to the restrictionof annual appropriation act, Chinese poultry products have long been excluded from US market. To solve this problem, China attempted to negotiate with US, but end upwithout any result. Finally, China resorted to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body.Based on detailed elaboration of the poultry dispute, this article aims to analyse thelegal issues, give insight into the influence of the SPS Agreement to members’ foodsecurity standards.