The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

However, negotiating agreements is only half the bat- tle. Since agriculture remains one of the most contentious points in international trade, every trade agreement requires a sustained monitoring effort to ensure full implementation — even by close allies of the U.S. In 1997, Israel nominally liberalized imports of American beef, only to ban them as “non-kosher.” Since the deter- mination of kosher status lay in the hands of the rabbini- cal authorities, the government claimed that its hands were tied. And for all their political differences, both China and Taiwan have dragged their feet on issuing the regulations required to implement their tariff rate quota commitments when they entered the WTO last year. New Frontiers in Protectionism As tariffs and other traditional trade barriers have fall- en, countries have been creative in finding new ones. Led by the E.U., our trading partners increasingly are using issues such as quarantine, biotechnology and food safety standards to evade their trade commitments, despite the clear intent of the WTO. For example, under the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, better known as the SPS Agreement, WTO contracting parties are only supposed to use the “least trade-restric- tive” barriers possible; to base their measures on sound science and international standards; and to accept alternative regulations that provide the same effective level of protection. Nevertheless, many U.S. trading partners routinely use SPS measures to block trade. Some countries may sus- pend all American fruit imports when they find a pest in just one piece of fruit among thousands, or decide to ban imports from a whole state or country when only one county has a disease risk. Other tactics, such as E.U. restrictions on the approval and marketing of bioengi- neered food, or the Russian ban on U.S. poultry imports, violate another WTO guideline, that contracting parties should rely on “sound science to protect human, animal or plant life.” Not all SPS trade barriers are illegitimate, of course. Many agricultural quarantines keep out pests that could cause significant damage to the environment and agricul- ture of the recipient country. (This is why even American travelers can’t just bring fresh fruit or meat back with them into the U.S.) One pest, the Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata), also known as the Medfly, was inad- vertently introduced into California in 1979 and into Florida in 1997. Although efforts to control the pest have been successful, they have not been cheap: since 1980, California has spent $250 million to contain the Medfly. But the alternative is much worse: a University of California study calculated that a major infestation could cause output losses of $538 million and 7,900 lost jobs in California alone. In the post-Sept. 11 world, these SPS issues also have important national security ramifications. FAS works closely with USDA’s quarantine agency, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, to protect the United States from harmful imports and to assist U.S. exporters in shipping products overseas. Reflecting this role, parts of APHIS were transferred to the new Department of Homeland Security. Still, sometimes such restrictions reach the absurd. At FoodEx, the largest food show in Asia, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture insisted that organic products dis- played would have to carry the ministry-approved organic label. This is despite the fact that the U.S. is considered equivalent with respect to organic production and the product would not be sold in Japan. The ministry also tried to insist that the trade show floor be designated as an import location, and that importer representatives arrive the day before the show to verify documentation and indi- vidually label every organic item. Although Japan relent- ed and acquiesced to having the food products labeled “Sample — not for resale”, that required a concerted effort by FAS and others to achieve. Another hurdle for U.S. farm exports has been the spread of “multifunctionality”: the idea that agriculture provides more than food and plays other important roles in conservation, the preservation of rural lifestyle, etc. The problem with this concept is that it can be applied to anything — for example, one could consider the steel industry multifunctional because it affects the environ- ment and the local economy. At its base, multifunctional- ity, like opposition to biotechnology and other SPS barri- ers, is often merely an excuse to impede trade and there- by protect inefficient domestic producers under the ban- ners of public health and environmentalism — without legal justification. As such barriers proliferate, FAS will need expertise not only in trade policy but, increasingly, in the hard sci- ences. Although FAS works closely with scientists in APHIS, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, the F O C U S 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 3