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The purpose of writing this paper is to present a comparative but critical assessment of the applicability of the precautionary principle (PP) under the SPS Agreement, which is a part of the WTO regime by implication, and under the Cartagena Protocol, which has been made under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The paper presents an analytical exposition of both the sets of laws, trade law and environmental law. The methodology adopted is library based. The approach is to bring about an amicable co-existence of both the laws so that they could serve the dual purpose, i.e. promotion of trade and protection of “human, animal and plant life and health” and conservation of the environment.

The DSB of the WTO should give due importance to the PP and should apply it liberally, keeping also in view the environmental aspects, so that along with free trade human, animal and plant health and life, and conservation of the environment are also protected.

It will change the present paradigm and will bring both the sets of laws together.

It focuses on the life and heath of poor people around the world. It, thus, pleads for application of strong PP.

When genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were put into the international trade, people in many countries, especially European countries, became skeptical of them. A perception developed that they are harmful to human, animal, plant life and health, and destructive to the environment. It is true that if there is no safe use of genetically modified living organisms (LMOs), other species might be affected causing loss to the environment. So as to ensure safe use of LMOs and GMOs, the Cartagena Protocol and the SPS Agreement were, respectively, made. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine both the legal instruments and to explore ways to make them co‐existent, so that human, animal, plant life and health, and the environment are protected without affecting the international trade in LMOs and GMOs.

This paper undertakes a critical examination of the issues surrounding GMOs and LMOs.

The Cartagena Protocol and the SPS Agreement serve two different purposes. It is for this reason that some of their provisions are not co‐extensive. But the conflict in them can be resolved. It is suggested that the provisions pertaining to the precautionary principle of the SPS Agreement should be brought in line with that of the Cartagena Protocol. It is also suggested that importing countries should conduct their own risk assessment preferably by following the CODEX procedure. In no case, risk assessment done by producing companies should be taken as conclusive.

If suggestions offered by the paper are followed, the two will then protect the human, animal and plant health and the environment in the best possible way.

For achieving its object, the paper presents a comparative assessment of the cases decided under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

This article examines the framework of the Agreement for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and assesses its impacts on domestic autonomy and authority in matters of food and environmental safety. The direct impact of the SPS Agreement appears quite limited, as only a few cases have arisen. The Agreement has not proven to be a pervasive tool for the purpose of overturning domestic policies on food or environmental safety, despite the fact that the WTO Panel or Appellate Body decisions have found that domestic measures violate the terms of the SPS Agreement. Limited enforcement mechanisms provide protection for domestic policies, though perhaps at the price of trade sanctions. Moreover, theoretical literature suggests that the SPS Agreement may indeed enhance democratic values by discounting the influence of special interests and retaining ultimate authority for enforcement within the discretion of domestic government. Important issues nevertheless remain, including the role of the precautionary principle in policymaking and the means to address normative values, such as developing moral consensus on animal welfare, in trade matters. Trade has proven to be a catalyst for change and cooperative development in this context.

There are several agreements within the framework of the World Trade Organization that have an impact on the issue of food safety. These include the prohibition against quantitative restrictions of GATT 94, the general exceptions of Article XX, the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights. This chapter analyzes the primary disputes pertaining directly or tangentially to matters of food safety and representation under each of these agreements that were impaneled under the dispute settlement understanding. Particular attention is given to the EC/Hormones and the EC/genetically modified organisms (GMO) cases.

One of the major strategic challenges facing the transatlantic trade relationship is the ability to regulate such risk areas as the environment whilst maintaining important trade flows. Much scholarship has emphasised formal United States (US)‐European Union (EU) trade disputes when considering the treatment of risk. However, these cases represent a minority of the trade conflict at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). A majority of trade conflict gets raised, debated and resolved informally in the WTO committee structure. The Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement is the WTO institutional arrangement that seeks to reconcile environmental, health and food safety regulations with trade objectives. The SPS embodies “in‐house” dispute resolution mechanisms that are based on the notion of constructive engagement. Mechanisms like ad hoc consultations, registering official protests, use of the chair's good offices and coordination with international standard setting organisations have been effective in promoting harmonisation between states. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper traces the process that is embedded within the SPS Committee for resolving trade conflict over risk‐based regulations, highlighting a recent case in point of wood‐packing materials.

The paper elucidates a good news story about how American and EU policy makers utilize SPS Committee mechanisms to resolve differences over environmental regulations at the SPS Committee. Specific recommendations are offered on how to strengthen those mechanisms.

If the recommendations offered are followed, trade conflict resolution over risk‐based issues in the SPS context will be strengthened.

The paper is the first utilizing a case study to assess the effectiveness of WTO/SPS mechanisms for trade conflict resolution.

The regulatory reach of the international trade regime beyond its own boundaries is attracting increasing scholarly and political attention as the World Trade Organization (WTO) is expected to reconcile free trade with concerns related to public health, environmental and labour issues or intellectual property rights. This paper aims to investigate to what extent and why the degree of legalization of non‐trade concerns in the WTO varies across issue areas.

The paper first assesses the degree of legalization (in terms of obligation, delegation and precision) for technical (phyto) sanitary, environmental, intellectual property and labour standards. It then adopts a neoliberal institutionalist perspective to account for the uneven legalization across issue areas.

The paper shows that legalization is strong for intellectual property rights, moderate for public health and environmental matters and weak for labour issues. It is argued that legalization is uneven because of members' (divergent) preferences regarding the regulation of non‐trade concerns and because of certain institutional aspects of the WTO.

The paper shows that it cannot be assumed that the WTO is a highly legalized trade regime, implying an even legalization across issue areas. It hopes to contribute to three strands in international relations literature: standard setting, legalization and “regime complexity”, a debate which deals with the interaction between partially overlapping, not hierarchically ordered international regimes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the trading relationship in agricultural goods that the United Kingdom (UK) will have when it leaves the European Union (EU). The decision of the UK to leave the EU has raised many questions, including some on the nature of the trading relationship that the UK will have with the EU and third countries once it leaves the EU.

For agriculture, the UK will need to develop its own agricultural policy as it will no longer be subject to the Common Agricultural Policy and one constraint on the development of that policy will be the Agreement on Agriculture concluded at the end of the Uruguay Round negotiations.

This paper examines the three pillars of that Agreement – market access, domestic support and export competition – to determine the commitments that the UK may make in each pillar and then looks at two other relevant agreements, the SPS Agreement and the TBT Agreement, to complete the discussion of the scope of the UK nascent agricultural policy.

The value of the paper lies in the discussion of the obligations to be assumed by the UK under the Agreement on Agriculture and the contours of UK agricultural policy once it leaves the EU.

The main objectives of this study were to examine the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) agricultural exports to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the tuning of the Agricultural Commodity Frequency Index (ACFI) to non-tariff measures (NTMs), and the coverage ratio of goods to determine the effects of the PRC’s NTMs on Lao PDR’s agricultural exports using a demand export model with a fixed-effect method. The authors found that Lao PDR’s agricultural exports to the PRC increased by an average of 46.91% from 2013 to 2020, covering a total of 51 product codes, comprising six of the most valuable product types (i.e., bananas, corn, tapioca flour, watermelon, sticky rice, and sweet potato) given priority by the PRC. Additionally, from 2013 to 2020, the average ACFI concentration with NTMs was 10.08%, and the average coverage ratio for goods was 14.43%. The results of statistical significance testing at 1% suggest that three factors demonstrated the most significant impact on value: agricultural products facing NTMs in the form of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBTs), treaties with priority conditions regarding SPSs and priorities for agricultural products, and the real gross domestic product (GDP) of the PRC. Furthermore, a PRC GDP increase of 1% resulted in a 3.1235% impact on Lao PDR exports.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate perspective in explaining how global food safety can be created through stringent implementation of Codex and World Trade Organization (WTOs) Sanitary and Phytosanitary food safety regulations and suggests the appropriate food safety system for India.

The study has been deployed a survey questionnaire using a sample of Indian Processed food sector. In order to collect data 1,000 supply chain professional were contacted for seeking their consent to be part of the survey. Whereas total responses collected were 252 from Delhi and NCR, with response rate 25.2 percent. The data collected was empirical tested using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression and ANOVA.

The results and discussions indicate that all the global food safety norms laid down by WTO such as goods manufacturing practices, good hygienic practice, hazard analysis critical control point, has been developed to embody principles of safe food processing sector globally. India has also developed their food safety norms as per laid down principles by WTO.

The present research work makes an important contribution to the body of literature on global food safety. The paper has important implications for the processed food sector since it tries to bring out practices which would help in successful implementation of global food safety standards. It is useful for academic food research as well as for processed food corporate.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of differences in sanitary and phytosanitary measures as non-tariff measures (NTMs) in the tea trade between importing and exporting countries. With the progress of trade liberalization, there has been a shift of focus to NTMs as alternative or potential trade barriers.

In order to quantify an NTM on tea trade and implement its empirical application, this study designed an index of differences in maximum residue levels (MRLs) for the pesticide endosulfan and introduced it into a gravity trade model. The estimation challenges in the presence of heteroscedasticity and many zero-trade flows are resolved by taking the Heckman and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimators.

This study found that differences in MRLs, arising from the stricter standards in importing countries lead to a significant decrease in tea trade value. This negative impact of differences in MRLs is found to be slightly less than that of tariffs, implying that in this case, the NTM acts as a policy substitute for import tariffs in the global tea trade.

The main contribution of this study is to suggest and quantify the differences in MRLs across countries as a substantial NTM on the global tea trade and provide its empirical application.