Study On The Risk Assessment Principles Under WTO's Agreement On Sanitary And Phytosanitary Measures Of The WTO

Combined with interpretation by relevant international organizations and the practice of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, through the legal analyses and the case analyses, this dissertation aims at a full study on the risk assessment principles of the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures of the WTO (hereinafter referred to as the"SPS Agreement"). There are four chapters in this dissertation with the main content as follows:The first chapter points out that the SPS Agreement is the outcome of the conflict and coordination between the promulgation of the SPS measures to protect the safety of the food, the human, the plants and the animals by WTO Members and the development and interest of the international trade. The SPS Agreement grants the Members the rights to adopt SPS measures while provides that the adoption of SPS measures should be based on relevant risk assessment, through which, imposing the obligation of the risk assessment to the Members. Then, this chapter refers to the relevant provisions of the international organizations and the SPS Agreement itself to analyze the background of the risk assessment and its meaning while classifies two kinds of risk assessment: the risk assessment stemmed from a pest or disease, the risk assessment stemmed from the food, beverage and the feedstuff. At last, the chapter analyzes the system of the risk assessment under the SPS Agreement.Through four important cases decided by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, the second chapter analyzes in detail the practice of the risk assessment principles of the SPS Agreement. As a new area of the international law, the development of the WTO legal studies seems to follow the rule of"making law by judicial practice". The development of the risk assessment principles is attributable to the development of the practice of the WTO dispute settlement. This chapter analyzes the four typical cases under WTO, namely Australia -Measures Affecting Importation of Salmon, European Communities - Measures Concerning Meat and Meat Products (Hormones), Japan - Measures Affecting Agricultural Products and European Communities - Measures Affecting the Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products, which covering the risk assessment on the pests of the animals, the plants as well as the food.The third chapter, as the major part of this dissertation, aims at addressing various issues of the risk assessment through legal analyses and case analyses. The issues include: disputes on the rational link between risk assessment and the adoption of the SPS measures, the zero risk and the acceptable risk, the risk assessment methods–qualitative assessment and quantitative assessment, the subject of the risk assessment, the evidence of the risk assessment– whether the non-mainstreaming scientific viewpoint can be adopted, the obligation of burden of proof, the factors to be considered in a risk assessment, etc.All the studies should be aimed at giving suggestion to practice. The last chapter analyzes the current situation in China and gives numerous suggestions from the aspects of importation and exportation, to fulfill the purpose of safeguarding the safety of the domestic environment and the people during the process of importation and to avoiding the misuse of SPS measures during the process of exportation.