Risk assessment procedures in SPS issues – the EU versus the USA approach

Risk assessment procedures in SPS issues – the EU versus the USA approach

Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards applied for food safety, animal and plant health are of crucial importance for consumer safety and for the international trade of food and food products. A key problem for governments is how to ensure that consumers are supplied with safe food, at the same time ensuring that strict health and safety regulations are not being used as an excuse for protecting domestic producers.

Risk assessment is a tool to overcome these problems. But there are differences in risk management decisions, due to different underlying risk assessment procedures in different countries. The US is one of EU’s larger trading partners and although they both strive for a high level of protection of life and health within their territory, regulatory barriers occur for some areas – including SPS. In the EU the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the keystone of risk assessment regarding food and feed safety.

 The aim of this seminar is to highlight the differences in risk assessment procedures and to see whether harmonized procedures might be used to remove regulatory divergences, prevent new barriers and promote convergence of future regulations. We will discuss the role of SPS agreements in the international trade and how risk assessment is essential for food safety, animal and plant health and consumer protection while minimizing unjustified obstacles to trade. We will also explore the interface between risk assessors and risk managers, all with special emphasis and examples from the animal health sector.

See pdf for full program.