An examination of food safety and international trade: The beef hormone ban in the European Union and the role of the WTO in resolving scientific barriers to trade.

摘要

The WTO has been at the center of many controversies—the value of globalization, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and whether the promotion of free trade can coexist with other values. Similarly, the current state of the global supermarket has created a new set of problems for food safety advocates and consumers—ensuring that foreign goods are safe to consume and meet the sanitary standards of importing countries.; This dissertation focuses on the area where these two issues meet and, often, collide—ensuring free trade for agribusiness without sacrificing food safety for the consumer. The European Communities instituted a ban on hormone-treated meat in 1981 on the basis of health concerns. The United States argued that it was a disguised restriction on trade and sought to remedy the problem through the WTO's system of dispute resolution. What follows is an analysis of the history of the dispute and its aftermath in an attempt to answer one question: Can the WTO resolve scientific barriers to trade in an attempt to ensure free trade and consumer safety?; Historical research was collected and analyzed while stakeholders and officials who participated in the dispute were interviewed in an attempt to understand and, subsequently, analyze the efficacy of the WTO system. Surprisingly, even though the ban first arose in 1981, this issue remains far from resolution.