The members of WTO have signed an agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, which provides guidelines for member countries to adopt measures related to food safety and animal and plant health from various biosafety risks arising from trades.
These risks are usually related to pests and diseases and may come from risks arising from additives, toxins, and contaminants in food and feed.
Each WTO member is entitled to maintain a level of protection it considers appropriate to protect human, animal or plant life or health within its territory. This is called the appropriate level of protection (ALOP).
The SPS Committee oversees the implementation of the SPS agreement and provides a forum for discussion on animal and plant health and food safety measures affecting trade.
It meets three times a year to discuss the members’ experiences, raise concerns about the members’ activities, and develop further guidance on implementing their SPS agreement. These measures are imposed by nations on each other if they think that a particular trade is a threat to their biosecurity.
For instance, in 2017, India imposed sanitary and phytosanitary measures on Chinese apples due to the presence of fungus and bugs.
The SPS allows countries to set their own standards, but the SPS regulations must be purely based on science. They should be applied only to the extent necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health. Measures under SPS should not arbitrarily or unjustifiably discriminate between countries in matters regarding trade.
For example, in May 2022 Turkey rejected the wheat shipment from India, citing the reason for the presence of Rubella disease. Many experts believe that this move by Turkey is mostly based on geopolitical grounds as Turkey was against the move of scraping Article 370.
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