World Trade Agreements Related With Food Business
World Trade Agreements Related With Food Business
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.
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)