Science in Sanitary and Phytosanitary Dispute Resolution
Science in Sanitary and Phytosanitary Dispute Resolution
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卫生与植物检疫争端解决科学
DOI：
10.22004/ag.econ.10504
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发表时间：
1997
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Powell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Powell
《世界贸易组织卫生与植物卫生协定》在很大程度上依赖科学和专家组织来避免和解决因食品安全或动植物健康保护理由下颁布的措施而产生的贸易争端。然而，卫生和植物检疫风险分析的科学状况是高度不确定的，SPS协定留下了许多科学政策问题尚未解决。根据《卫生与植物检疫措施协定》，负责协调标准和形成国际科学共识的国际机构面临着一项艰巨而充满政治色彩的任务。简要介绍了两个案例研究。在第一个案例中，国际科学共识强烈支持美国对欧盟禁止牛生长激素的挑战，但争端的根源要深得多。这一案例表明，仅仅以“可靠的科学”为基础建立SPS措施的先例可能是一个难以实现的目标。在第二个案例中，国内鳄梨生产商对美国农业部的一项评估提出了质疑，该评估得出的结论是，部分解除对墨西哥鳄梨的进口禁令对植物有害生物的风险可以忽略不计。尽管农业部的植物检疫风险评估得到了独立科学家的认可，但解决这一争端的一个促成因素是美国对墨西哥农产品出口受到报复的威胁。最近一项对当前和拟议中的美国农产品出口技术壁垒的调查表明，贸易影响可能接近每年50亿美元，未来最常见的SPS争端将是生物危险--特别是植物病虫害和食源性微生物病原体。然而，这带来了巨大的挑战，因为生物应激源的风险评估实践远远落后于对化学物质的风险评估。文章最后提出了SPS风险评估中科学证据权重的评价标准。
The World Trade Organization Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS Agreement) relies heavily on science and expert organizations to avoid and resolve trade disputes over measures enacted under the rationale of food safety or plant and animal health protection. However, the state of science for sanitary and phytosanitary risk analysis is highly uncertain, and the SPS Agreement leaves many science policy issues unsettled. The international agencies charged under the SPS Agreement with harmonizing standards and forging international scientific consensus face a daunting and politically-charged task. Two case studies are briefly developed. In the first case, the international scientific consensus strongly supports the U.S. challenge of the European Union’s ban on cattle growth hormones, but the root causes of the dispute go much deeper. The case suggests that establishing a precedent for SPS measures based solely on "sound science" may be a slippery objective. In the second case, domestic avocado producers challenged a U.S. Department of Agriculture assessment which concluded that a partial lifting of the ban on Mexican avocado imports posed a negligible plant pest risk. Although the Department’s phytosanitary risk assessment gained endorsement by independent scientists, a contributing factor to resolving this dispute was the threat of retaliation against U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico. A recent survey of current and proposed technical barriers to U.S. agricultural exports suggests that the trade impacts could approach $5 billion a year and that the most common SPS disputes in the future will be over biological hazardsparticularly plant pests and food-borne microbial pathogens. This poses a tremendous challenge, however, because the practice of risk assessment for biological stressors is much less developed than that for chemical substances. The paper concludes with some proposed criteria for evaluating the weight of scientific evidence in SPS risk assessment.