| SPS, is the abbreviation of sanitary and phytosanitary. SPS measures stand for the necessary sanitary and phytosanitary measures used for protecting human, animal or plant life or health. SPS management system stands for the management system owned by a WTO member on the application and implementation of sanitary and phytosanitary measures to protect human, animal and plant life and health.SPS Agreement, i.e. 《Agreement on The Application of Sanitary And Phytosanitary Measures》 is one of the 13 agreements on trade of WTO. The Agreement was created to improve the human health, animal health and phytosanitary situation in all members, to establish a multilateral framework of rules and disciplines to guide the development, adoption and enforcement of sanitary and phytosanitary measures in order to minimize their negative effects on trade. According to the SPS Agreement, the principles of transparency, non-discrimination, regionalization, equivalence and nationality should be obeyed by WTO members during the application of a SPS measure, and should not be adopted in a mean which constitute a disguised restriction on international trade. The SPS measures must be scientific and based on risk analysis. In cases where relevant scientific evidence is insufficient, a member of WTO may provisionally adopt sanitary or phytosanitary measures on the basis of available pertinent information. Due to the concealment and complexity of SPS measures, they may be used as a trade protecting measure by some experienced WTO members, especially used by them for preventing the entry into their territory of agri-products, to establish their technical barriers on trade. Our agri-product is often refused by importing country because of failing to meet the so called SPS requirements. Since the accession of WTO, China have encountered this kind of situation for many times, which bring new challenges to our international trade. Canada is one of the important members that created the WTO, it took part in the negotiations of all the 13 WTO agreements including the 《SPS Agreement》 . Canadian SPS management system is recognized as the best and the most advanced one, which have a completed infrastructure, good control strategy, developed inspection services and can take part in the international activities actively, for having a integrated organization, developed laws and regulations, reasonable procedures, coordinating operations, effective implementation and good supervision. Therefore, the Canadian SPS management system is respected and and followed by the international society, and even copied by some countries.While within the Chinese SPS management system, there are some deficiencies such as multi-department participating, lack of effectively coordination, uncompleted laws and regulations as well as standards, no risk precaution mechanism and emergent action mechanism. These deficiencies are affecting the implementation of the measures used for protecting human health, animal health and phytosanitary as well as food safety, not to say to use these measures as technical trade barriers toprotect our domestic industries.In this study, the writer studied the features of the Canadian SPS management system carefully, analyzed its structure, legal framework, management styles and features, summarized its successful experiences, and therefore draw out some recommendations on improving the Chinese SPS management system including improve our legal system at different levels, clarifying our SPS rights and obligations within the WTO framework, enhancing our risk assessment, establishing appropriate level of protection, setting up a integrated food chain, establishing a powerful and strong technical supporting system, improving our emergent action system and the capacities on participating the activities hosted by the WTO/SPS committee. The recommendations can either be used by the department which is in charge of structure reforming for reference, and can also be referred by the functional departments related to SPS management currently to enhance their coo... |
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