International agricultural trade and barriers of WTO’s SPS Agreement

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the WTO Agreement on Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and its influence on the flow of international trade in agricultural products. The analysis was mainly focused on the procedural aspects of the Agreement. The study revealed that many countries impose unfair barriers to trade when they use procedural mechanisms under the SPS Agreement with protectionist intent. The unfair trade measures may impede the best allocation of available resources and create obstacles to the sustainable development of countries. This happens because it is hard to prove such bureaucratic practices, and therefore to fight them. The WTO members foresaw this, so the Agreement has mechanisms that aim to prevent these unfair trade measures. This study evaluated such mechanisms and concluded that they have low efficiency in relation to the objectives that have been proposed. Thus, it should be avoided that the SPS procedures become unreasonable barriers to the international agricultural trade.