Ethical Considerations for Food Safety Policies
The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the "SPS Agreement") entered into force with the establishment of the World Trade Organization on 1 January 1995 in order to ensure that consumers are being supplied with food that is safe to eat wherever it comes from and that countries do not over protect there domestic producers. It encourages government to “harmonize” their national measures on the international standards, guidelines and recommendations developed by WTO member governments in other international organizations such as the joint FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission for Food Safety; the World Organization for Animal Health and the FAO International Plant Protection Convention. This represents a huge amount of work and time spent in official meetings, not mentioning the other meetings dealing with other topics.
In practice, most of developing countries do not actively participate to those decisions. In fact, even if most international agencies provide money for Member State representative's travel fees, they cannot bear the expenses for all meetings. Moreover, it is possible for part of those meetings, especially WTO's meetings, to come along with experts. As we learned during the WTO's visit, this is often the case for Europeans or North American countries. How can one person make his voice heard in front of dozens of professionals? How can one person understand every single sentence written by dozens of lawyers? Finally, even if this agreement has been endorsed by all Member Countries, it does not always mean that it reflects the will of developing countries. More sadly, it could mean that it is a way for developed countries to let the poorest countries lag behind and still, to profit of their resources by harvesting them, manufacturing them and/or exporting them in accordance with the international standards.
It is true that people used to eating good quality food have the right to hope that it will always be so. But it is also true that people from developing countries have the right to hope that one day, they will benefit from all their country's prosperity. There are no simple answers to these statements; there are only good questions that we need to keep in mind.
Marie Edan
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