SPS COMMITTEE: VOLUNTARY STANDARDS DIVIDE MEMBERS

Following two years of exploratory discussions to assess what role - if any - the WTO could play in regulating the vast and growing array of standards set by the private sector, WTO Members will start looking at specific case studies.

Discussions on these standards' effects on trade continued at an 18-19 October meeting of the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Products (SPS) (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 6 July 2007). According to delegates, the debate has come to something of an impasse, with developing and developed countries pitted against each other over whether the SPS Committee and WTO are competent to deal with private sector standards.

Committee Chair Marinus PC Huige (The Netherlands) asked countries whether they thought the SPS Committee was the correct venue for a discussion on private sector standards - and if so, what the scope of its work should be.

Developing countries including Egypt and many other African countries intervened in support of continued engagement at the WTO. Private sector standard-setting was of key importance to developing countries, they said, given that they led to additional costs and strongly affected potential export opportunities. They further noted that while the standards were in theory voluntary, they became quasi-mandatory in practice, and posed non-tariff barriers to exports. These countries argued that governments should take responsibility for the WTO-compatibility of voluntary standards set by companies within their borders, and that the SPS Committee could support the process.

Developed countries, on the other hand, said the WTO did not have the mandate to deal with standards set by entities other than governments. They added that many of the standards discussed did not cover food safety - the traditional province of the SPS Committee - but rather environment, packaging and other issues that might be raised in other WTO bodies, such as the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade.

The EU said that the discussion at the WTO had already encouraged private sector standard-setting bodies to look more carefully at the development impacts of their activities.

Many Members agreed that future discussions should be based on proposals for how to address the challenges posed by private sector standards, and ought to focus on case studies and countries' concrete experiences.

In related news, the WTO Secretariat recently launched an online database (http://spsims.wto.org/) set up to help countries and companies access information about their trading partners' standards.

ICTSD reporting.

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