The National Chicken Council, along with more than 50 other food and agricultural organizations and companies on Monday sent letters to White House Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman and Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the Subcommittee on Trade of the House Ways and Means Committee, stressing the importance of strong sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) provisions as a critical element of high-standard negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.
Letters were also sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack; Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Demetrios Marantis; and Ranking Member, House Ways and Means Committee Charles Rangel (D-NY).
“The U.S. food and agriculture sector has worked extensively with this administration in pursuit of improved and science-based disciplines on the application of SPS measures. This reflects the reality that SPS barriers are a significant and growing impediment to market access for a wide range of our products in foreign markets. TPP is intended to set a new and higher standard in many areas; we believe it is critical that this includes forging a more effective path forward with respect to SPS commitments,” the letter to Froman said.
The biggest potential value in SPS issues, the groups said, is where TPP can break new ground in such issues namely obligations that go beyond the current World Trade Organization SPS agreement on issues such as risk assessment; risk management; transparency; border checks/laboratory testing; and facilitating trade through regulatory coherence measures. In addition, significant value could be added to SPS commitments through including a Rapid Response Mechanism to help improve trade facilitation and resolve shipment-specific issues, the letter pointed out.
However, to ensure that agricultural traders throughout the TPP region can truly count on those commitments, it is essential that the United States now focus on finding a way to make SPS provisions that go beyond current WTO commitments in TPP enforceable, the groups said. “Without the threat of penalties for noncompliance, trading partners are unlikely to adhere to their obligations; this is, of course, why dispute settlement exists. SPS commitments should not be given short-shrift in this regard; they too must be enforceable requirements,” the organizations stressed in their letter to Froman.
The letter to Chairman Nunes pointed out that the 50-plus groups signing the letter were strongly supportive of requiring that SPS provisions in future trade agreements be subject to dispute settlement, particularly in areas that build upon or clarify existing World Trade Organization commitments.
Given the likelihood that TPP will serve as a precedent for a trade agreement with the European Union, the significance of SPS issues and the ability to enforce SPS commitments in order to safeguard market access opportunities for American agriculture is even more urgent.
