Sanitary and phytosanitary measures and food safety:: challenges and opportunities for developing countries

Because of fast-growing demand, export markets can absorb high value added products and offer high returns; for many developing countries export market development is thus a key requirement for rural income generation and rural growth. Although developing countries face increasingly strict sanitary and phytosanitary standards in their export markets, they can maintain and improve market access - and improve domestic food safety and agricultural productivity - by adopting a strategic approach to food safety, agricultural health and trade. High-income countries should increase development flows to help developing countries build the capacity to plan and execute the necessary strategies. The first proposal in this paper is to make two existing sets of guidelines widely available to interested parties, in particular through the World Bank and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). The first covers the broad process of problem assessment, strategy development and action plan formulation; the second set deals with institutional analysis and training of staff of the official sanitary control services. The second proposal is that interested countries and donors should speed up the ongoing development of guidelines, computer software tools and training material to help countries quantify the importance and impact of food safety issues. The focus here is on a 'multipurpose agricultural data analysis and modelization system'. The third proposal is to carry out a case study to help demonstrate that a number of animal health issues related to food safety should be treated as relating to 'global public goods' and thus require intervention on a global scale. Possible candidates are foot and mouth disease and highly pathogenic avian influenza.