A New and Controversial Mandate for the SPS Agreement: The WTO Panel's Interim Report in the E. C.-Biotech Dispute

摘要

The Panel's report has created more questions with regard to WTO jurisprudence than it has resolved. At the same time that it disposed of the complaining parties' claims on largely technical grounds, and avoided a decision on whether EC biotech measures were valid under WTO jurisprudence, the Panel engendered a broad and powerful interpretation of the SPS Agreement. Having been given such an extensive scope in the EC-Biotech Interim Panel Report, it appears that the SPS Agreement has now become applicable to issues far beyond the traditional sanitary and phytosanitary realm of preventing the spread of exotic pests and protecting consumers from contaminants or toxins in imported food material. With its demanding requirements for SPS measures and now a broadened mandate, the SPS Agreement appears increasingly likely to surface on the WTO scene as the premier instrument for attacking disputed health and environmental protection measures in the global trade arena.