The protection of human, plant and animal life and health is clearly a duty of all governments within their sovereign sphere.
For this purpose, governments have in place regulatory measures aimed at the protection of health1 in their territories against risks contained in food and agricultural products. These health measures can focus on human
or animal life or health (sanitary measures) or on plant life or health (phytosanitary measures). Together, they are termed
sanitary and phytosanitary (“SPS”) measures and can take many forms. One can think of examples such as regulations setting
maximum residue levels for toxins or contaminants,2 approval procedures for additives, quarantine requirements to minimize the spread of pests and diseases, labeling requirements
to notify consumers of potentially-harmful foodstuffs (such as allergen-containing products), regulations governing the process
or production method whereby the product is made, inspection or certification requirements or outright bans on potentially
hazardous products.3 These are all SPS measures.
Formerly Counsellor to the Appellate Body of the WTO. The authors gratefully acknowledge that they have benefited from the
comments of Mariëlle Matthee of the Asser Institute on an earlier draft of this chapter as well as from a discussion with
Gretchen Stanton of the Agriculture and Commodities Division of the WTO Secretariat. They are also grateful for the valuable
assistance of Karla Vanessa Araujo, Jurga Stancuite and Eline Post graduate students at the Universiteit Maastricht. Any errors
that remain are those of the authors. This chapter takes account of developments through July, 2004.
For purposes of this chapter, unless otherwise specified, a reference to “health” or “public health” should be taken to mean
human, animal or plant life or health. Similarly, “health measures” refer to measures for the protection of human, animal
or plant life or health.
The EC’s maximum residue levels for aflotoxins are an example of such an SPS measure.
For example, many countries banned beef imports from the EC in response to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001.