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Food Safety Regulation in TTIP: Much Ado About Nothing?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Alan Matthews
Alan Matthews*
Affiliation:
European Agricultural Policy, Trinity College Dublin, email: alan.matthews@tcd.ie
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Extract

Disputes over food safety standards –what in the language of trade policy are called sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) – have been at the heart of many transatlantic trade rows between the US and the EU. Examples include the EU bans on the import of hormone–treated beef, on pork treated with growth–promoting additives, or on poultry washed in antimicrobial rinses to reduce the amount of microbes on meat. As a result, the potential impact of the ongoing negotiations to reach a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade agreement between the US and EU on EU food standards has, rightly, attracted a lot of attention and no little anxiety. Opposition to “Chlorhühnchen” has become the rallying–call for anti–TTIP activists in many countries. NGOs argue that “TTIP will sacrifice food safety for faster trade”. Critics highlight possible procedural rules requiring transparency of decision–making and early warning mechanisms which would give interested parties (including of course business firms and lobby groups) the opportunity to comment on planned rule–making which it is argued are likely to lead to ‘regulatory chill’.

Type
Symposium on TTIP Leaks
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 256 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016

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References

1 Josling, Timothy and Tangermann, Stefan, Transatlantic Food and Agricultural Trade Policy: 50 Years of Conflict and Convergence (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing), 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See, for example, BEUC, “Food and the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP)”, 7 May 2014, available on the internet at http://www.beuc.eu/publications/beuc-x-2014-030_ipa_beuc_position_paper_ttip_food.pdf (last accessed 29 May 2016); Friends of the Earth Europe, “How TTIP undermines food safety and animal welfare”, 4 February 2015, available on the internet at https://www.foeeurope.org/how-TTIP-undermines-food-safety-animal-welfare-040215 (last accessed 29 May 2016); GRAIN, “Food Safety in the EU–US Trade Agreement: going outside the box”, 10 December 2013, available on the internet at https://www.grain.org/article/entries/4846-food-safety-in-the-eu-us-trade-agreement-going-outside-the-box (last accessed 29 May 2016).

3 James Crisp, “TTIP will sacrifice food safety for faster trade, warn NGOs”, 28 August 2014, available on the internet at http://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/ttip-will-sacrifice-food-safety-for-faster-trade-warn-ngos/ (last accessed 29 May 2016).

4 Friends of the Earth Europe supra, note 3.

5 European Parliament, “Highlights from the European Parliament Hearing of Cecilia Malmström European Commissioner for Trade”, 29 September 2014, available on the internet at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2014/536417/EXPO_BRI(2014)536417_EN.pdf (last accessed 29 May 2016). See also the DG Trade Fact Sheet, “Food safety and animal and plant health in TTIP”, 7 January 2015, available on the internet at http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2015/january/tradoc_153004.3%20Food%20safety,%20a+p%20health%20%28SPS%29.pdf (last accessed 26 May 2016).

6 Greenpeace, “TTIP Leaks”, 1 May 2016, available on the internet at https://ttip-leaks.org/ (last accessed 29 May 2016).

7 Cecilia Malmström, “Negotiating TTIP”, 2 May 2016, available on the internet at https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/malmstrom/blog/negotiating-ttip_en (last accessed 29 May 2016).

8 The consolidated texts leaked by Greenpeace Netherlands refer to the state of play in March 2016 prior to the 13th round of negotiations at the end of April 2016.

9 Alexia Herwig, “TTIP Regulatory Cooperation: Changes in Transnational Risk Regulation from WTO Law and WTO–Consistency”, this volume, discusses the potential consequences of the RC chapter in detail.

10 Greenpeace, “Note – Tactical State of Play of the TTIP Negotiations – March 2016”, 1 May 2016, available on the internet at https://ttip-leaks.org/(last accessed 29 May 2016).

11 DG TRADE, “EU proposal to include an article on Anti-Microbial Resistance within the SPS Chapter of TTIP”, 6 November 2015, available on the internet at http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/html/153936.htm (last accessed 26 May 2016).

12 On negotiated rule–making in the US, see Richard Parker and Alberto Alemanno, Towards Effective Regulatory Cooperation under TTIP: A Comparative Overview of the EU and US Legislative and Regulatory Systems, Special Report No. 88, (Brussels, Centre for European Policy Studies), 2014.

13 Herwig (supra, note 10) notes with respect to similar provisions in the RC chapter that the requirement to lay out the basis for a specific regulation could make it easier for a complainant to attack regulatory measures as unnecessary for the regulatory objective. Also, the WTO Article 5.8 is a soft law obligation which refers to “should” rather than “shall” which leaves room for other concerns to be taken into account.

14 Complaints about undue delays in the completion of the EC approval procedures were upheld by the WTO panel in the ECBiotech case.