Review The Legitimacy Of Animal Welfare Barriers Under The WTO Legal System Illustrated By "EC-Seal Products" Case

Although the world trade organization(WTO) allows nations take trade restrictions action to protect animals, there is no regulation of animal welfare standards and procedure.Whether members can use the terms of WTO agreement to prove the legitimacy of animal welfare measures, the dispute settlement body did not explicitly stipulated in judicial precedent, resulting in some individual member states deliberately using the terms, and limiting imports in the disguise of animals protection, making other members suffer discriminatory treatment and cause adverse influence on export trade. So the article gets conclusions by means of analyzing the adjudication of “European Communities —Measures Prohibiting the Importation and Marketing of Seal Products(Complainant:Canada and Norway) ”: Firstly, animal welfare belongs to the target of "public morals exception" clause under GATT1994 agreement. The animal welfare barriers can receive preliminary legitimacy on the basic of animal it is necessary to the objectives it pursued. If it complies with the requirement of "non-discriminatory" which defined by article 20 of the chapeau of GATT1994 agreement, animal welfare barriers can obtain the ultimate legitimacy. Second, only barriers set up by Product-Related PPMs can be regulated by TBT agreement, while None-Product-Related PPMs threat to the ecological environment of global resources, import members can apply GATT1994 Article 20(b) and(g), as an exception to the obligation of “non-discrimination” in trade restrictions.Finally, to the three trade restrictions, import bans, mandatory labeling and voluntary labeling system, TBT agreement only regulate the import ban in line with the three elements of “technical regulations" and mandatory labeling which related to the characteristic of the product. For the mandatory labeling which is unrelated to characteristics of the product is not necessarily regulated by TBT agreement and the non-compulsory voluntary labeling is surely not regulated by TBT agreement. Faced with other members’ illegal animal welfare barriers, our country must seek international and domestic measures to improve the international environment for our exports.