Research On Legal Issues Of GMF International Trade Dispute

Genetically Modified Food( Hereinafter referred to as “GMF”) has jumped into the eyes of the public with the rapid development of biological technology.The phenomenon also has something to do with the triumph of international trades between countries on GMF. However, these countries usually have different attitudes towards GMF because there are still doubts about the safety of GMF and even scientists in this special area cannot confirm the safety. Countries have enacted different legislations and regulations to control the GMF trades. Thus many disputes have arisen out of this inconsistency. China trade with other countries concerning GMF and disputes do happen.In order to prevent such disputes in a better way and to explore possible ways to solve such disputes, the paper compares specific contents of relative international agreements under two aspects, WTO agreements and multilateral environmental agreements/conventions and focuses on the SPS Agreement and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to CBD(Which means “Convention on Biological Diversity”). This paper also explores legislations and regulations of European Union, the USA, Japan and China laying stress on the premarket approval procedure and the labelling requirements. The paper finds out that the inconsistency of legislation is the main legal reason of GMF disputes and the conflicts between international agreements make it hard to prevent and solve these disputes.After analyzing the legal problems above, the paper comes to the conclusions as follows:From an international point of view, first, it will be useful if the secretariat of WTO and CBD try their best to cooperate with each other to reduce the impact of the conflicts between these agreements. Second, though there are no certain rules to follow when it turns to the dispute settlement mechanism, it’s highly recommended to use the dispute settlement body of WTO because it could make substantial progress to solve the disputes. Meanwhile, parties of the international trade could set the dispute settlement clauses during negotiation. Third, the premarket approval procedure and the labeling requirements discussed in the paper fit certain provision of the SPS Agreement and this agreement should have applicable privilege.From China’s point of view, on the one hand, some provisions on premarket procedure and labeling requirements of the regulations should be amended to meet the requirements of the SPS Agreement. On the other hand, China should take advantage of its status as a developing country to protect its benefit to a largest extent.However, there’s a great uncertainty of the solutions of GMF international disputes. Holdings of this paper are just a preliminary exploration. The solutions of trade disputes should be based on detailed information of specific circumstances and the solutions are determined or affected by the safety of GMF tested by time with the development of biotechnology.