WORLD TRADE

AGREEMENTS RELATED
WITH FOOD BUSINESS
Following the Uruguay Round negotiations, all
agricultural products were brought under multilateral
trade rules by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture.
1. Increased market access for agricultural trade by
restricting the imports from foreign producers.

2. Domestic support policies on agricultural trade-

Domestic support policies include a variety of
measures aimed at raising the income of producers
& sustaining the profitability of domestic farming.

3. Export subsidies on agricultural products- Providing

export subsidies to the producers thereby resulting in
the increase of export.
 SPS Agreement
• Agreement on the Application of Sanitary &
Phytosanitary Measures
• It concerns the application of food safety & animal &
plant health regulations.
• How do you ensure that your country’s consumers
are being supplied with food that is safe to eat —
"safe" by the standards you consider appropriate?
• How can you ensure that strict health & safety
regulations are not being used as an excuse for
protecting domestic producers?
• sets out the basic rules for food safety & animal &
plant health standards.
• It allows countries to set their own standards & are
encouraged to use international standards,
guidelines & recommendations.
• These regulations must be based on science.
• They should be applied only to the extent necessary
to protect human, animal or plant life or health.
• The basic aim - to maintain the sovereign right of any
government to provide the level of health protection
it seems appropriate, but to ensure that these
sovereign rights are not misused for protectionist
purposes & do not result in unnecessary barriers to
international trade.
• All countries maintain measures to ensure that food
is safe for consumers & to prevent the spread of
pests or diseases among animals & plants.
• These sanitary & phytosanitary measures can take
many forms, such
– as requiring products to come from a disease-free area,
– inspection of products,
– specific treatment or processing of products,
– setting of allowable maximum levels of pesticide residues
or permitted use of only certain additives in food.
• Sanitary (human & animal health) & phyto-sanitary
(plant health) measures apply to domestically
produced food or local animal & plant diseases, as
well as to products coming from other countries.
Key features
 International standards
• The SPS Agreement encourages governments to
establish national SPS measures consistent with
international standards, guidelines &
recommendations -"harmonization"

 Risk Assessment
• Countries must establish SPS measures on the basis
of an appropriate assessment of the actual risks
involved, &, if requested, make known what factors
they took into consideration, the assessment
procedures they used & the level of risk they
determined to be acceptable.
Adapting to conditions
• Due to differences in climate, existing pests or
diseases, or food safety conditions, it is not always
appropriate to impose the same sanitary & phyto-
sanitary requirements on food, animal or plant
products coming from different countries.
• Therefore, sanitary & phyto-sanitary measures
sometimes vary, depending on the country of origin
of the food, animal or plant product concerned.

Transparency
• The SPS Agreement increases the transparency of
sanitary & phyto-sanitary measures.
 TBT AGREEMENT
• Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade
• “technical barriers to trade” - use of the domestic
regulatory process as a means of protecting domestic
producers.
• The TBT Agreement seeks to assure that:
– mandatory product regulations,
– voluntary product standards &
– conformity assessment procedures (procedures
designed to test a product’s conformity with
mandatory regulations or voluntary standards)
• do not become unnecessary obstacles to
international trade & are not employed to obstruct
trade.
 TRIPS Agreement
• Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights
• The agreement requires all WTO member states to
establish minimum standards of legal protection &
enforcement for a number of different forms of intellectual
property rights (IPRs).
• The rights covered by TRIPS include
– copyright & related rights;
– trademarks;
– geographical indications;
– industrial designs;
– patents;
– layout-designs of integrated circuits;
– protection of undisclosed information (trade secrets);
– control of anti-competitive practices in contractual licences.
• Common examples include
• extension of copyright protection to computer
programs, which are now treated as literary works,
• the application of patent protection to plants,
animals, micro-organisms, DNA sequences, &
pharmaceuticals.
• In many countries drugs had been excluded from
patent protection on the grounds of public interest.
 GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS RELATED TO
INTERNATIONAL TRADE
• Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT)
• Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP)
• Indian Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO)
• Export Inspection Council (EIC)
• Indian Council of Arbitration (ICA)
• Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and
Statistics (DCI&S)
• Agricultural and Processed Food Products
Development Authority (APEDA)
• Marine Products Export Development Authority
(MPEDA)
• Export Promotion Councils (EPCs)
• Commodity Boards (CBs)
• Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT)
• Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO)
• National Centre for Trade Information (NCIT)
• State Trading Corporation of India (STC)
• Chamber of Commerce (CoC)