Chapter 26 - World Trade Organization and Food Regulation: Impact on the Food Supply Chain

Abstract

Consumers nowadays are faced with food or food ingredients that may derive from distant countries or continents and with a less transparent food supply. Safety concerns must cover the range of different food chains relevant to a certain food product or product group, including all relevant producers, manufacturing sites and food service establishments within a country as well as those importing into the country. Food regulation in the main is aimed at protecting the consumer’s health, increasing economic viability, harmonizing well-being and engendering fair trade on foods within and between nations. Hazard analysis at critical control points, good manufacturing practice and good hygiene practice are major components of the safety management systems in the food supply chain. Principally, ‘a hazard’ is a biological, chemical or physical agent in, or condition of, food that has the potential to cause an adverse health effect. The likelihood of occurrence and severity of the same is important for the assessment of the risk presented by the hazard to the food supply chain. The Government’s regulatory mechanisms in accordance with the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements (HACCPs, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures etc.) oversee the analyses of public health problems and their association to the food supply. Under the WTO SPS Agreements and the codes of practices issued by the Codex Alimentarius Commission there now exists a benchmark for international harmonization that guarantees the trade of safe food. It is also becoming clear that non-tariff measures, such as regulatory standards for manufactured and agricultural goods, can have a significant impact on trade.