With the world rapidly transforming from multiple singular, isolated regions to Marshall McLuhan’s ‘Global Village’, there has been a phenomenal rise in exchange – of goods, services, people, culture and whatnot. Among these, International Trade has acted as the first catalyst of eroding geographical boundaries and traversing continents, itself multiplying in the process. Beginning in the last decades of the century, the WTO, through intense negotiations and agreements, has been successful in lowering tariffs to sustainable levels. But as simple average most-favoured-nation (MFN) tariffs declined, application of alternative protectionist measures such as standards/regulations as trade policy instruments witnessed a surge. These Non-tariff Measures (NTMs) have now become the hot potato of International trade discussions, regularly featuring in WTO’s agenda. Imbalance in market access still prevails in the global arena between developed and developing countries, primarily owing to rising NTMs. This issue is alarming in the case of agricultural trade, wherein the WTO negotiations have led to substantial disciplining of the tariff structure (with 100 percent binding of tariffs) and are expected to further it at the culmination of the Doha Round, while the use of non-tariff measures (NTMs) are on the rise. The working paper is divided into six sections. Section I provides a brief overview of the concept of NTMs and the various ways they are classified. Section II focuses on SPS measures, elaborating on their origin, legal provisions, need and other relevant issues. Further, Section III includes a short review of previously conducted similar studies and their significant findings. Section IV and V form the backbone of the paper, elucidating the empirical results of the study conducted – the Analysis of SPS Notifications on multiple grounds. While Section V highlights significant problem areas, Section VI enlists chief policy recommendations that can be quickly adopted by the stakeholders to simplify international trade. We have established it through finding difference across the three classifications used for this work: the WTO classification; income-based World Bank Classification and the agricultural sector share to GDP or GDP based classification. This work has divided the 164 WTO members into three categories of above 25 percent; less than 25 to 10 percent shares of the agricultural sector; and lastly less than 10 percent shares. It brings to the forefront that the developed countries are the primary cause of this surge in NTMs.