The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a global trade body that promotes free trade by encouraging its Members to decrease the trade barriers while balancing it with the rights of Members to regulate to protect their legitimate public interests.<br/>This balance is based on a proper justification of the introduction of trade-restrictive measures by the WTO Members. In many cases, it includes a required scientific justification. This is particularly relevant for agricultural and food trade.<br/>Thus, the WTO Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Agreement (SPS Agreement) provides the WTO Members with the right to adapt SPS measures necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health. However, the SPS Agreement also encourages the WTO Members to base their SPS measures on relevant international standards. In addition to that, the SPS Agreement states that the WTO Members only can introduce SPS measures that are resulting in a higher level of SPS protection than international standard, when there is a scientific justification for doing so.<br/>A rule-based approach and predictability are crucial for agri-food trade, and the WTO plays a great role in supporting those principles on the multilateral trading system. The importance of the WTO in enhancing the principles of scientific-based SPS measures for meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was also emphasized by the WTO Members in the most recent WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires in December 2017.

Navigating World Trade Organization activities to promote science-based trade

2019 Fall National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.