Public Participation in International Pesticide Regulation: When the Codex Commission Decides, Who Will Listen?
By Lewis Rosman
INTRODUCTION
Since the New Deal, public participation in governmental decision making has been central to the legitimacy of the growing administrative state in the United States. As the global economy grows and regulatory decision making moves to international bodies, the role of public participation in government affairs has become an important international issue. This Note examines how public participation fits into current initiatives emerging from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to “harmonize” national pesticide residue standards.
World trade policy negotiators are currently seeking to reduce the trade-inhibiting potential of national health and environmental regulations. Present GATT draft proposals offer new ways to resolve conflicts over whether domestic regulations are legitimate barriers to trade. Environmental and consumer advocates fear that the international effort to reduce trade barriers will weaken national environmental standards.
Of particular concern is the effect of negotiations on food safety standards. By imposing strict pesticide residue limits, a nation can prevent entry of competing food product imports into the domestic market. Previous international efforts to prohibit “unnecessary” regulation have failed to resolve trade disputes like the one sparked by the European Community's rejection of American beef raised with the aid of a hormone additive.
International efforts have recently focused on preempting such disputes by “harmonizing” national standards and thus promoting international standards to which countries would agree. Proposals developed during the recent Uruguay Round of the GATT have sought to establish international standards set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission as a baseline for trade disputes over food safety issues.
The proposed international standard-setting process is in some respects similar to American standard setting. Important differences between the two systems, however, may create substantive discrepancies in standards for pesticide residues on food. Although no one has charged U.S. officials with establishing pesticide regulations to prevent trade, the proposed GATT regime would allow an importer to challenge those U.S. regulations that exceeded international standards as unfair barriers to trade. The United States is a major food importer and has one of the most extensive systems of pesticide regulation in the world; U.S. standards could be challenged as prohibitively high. Also, as the world's largest food exporter, the United States has a strong interest in preventing food safety standards from becoming trade barriers.
Aside from the threat of reduced standards, however, the process by which the Codex formulates regulations fails to assimilate the democratic principles reflected in the U.S. pesticide regulatory regime. Specifically, the Codex process does not recognize that the public should check industry influence on decision making and that only by accommodating public participation can an institution legitimately impose regulations in a democratic society.
Part II of this Note explains the role pesticide regulations can play as trade barriers and describes past attempts to cure trade-inhibiting regulations. It also describes the developing role of the Codex Alimentarius Commission—the organization charged by the draft GATT agreement with maintaining international baseline standards for food safety—in the movement toward harmonization.
Part III discusses the standard-setting process of the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its Pesticide Residue Committee. It explores the political nature of international standard setting and, in particular, how the Codex Commission's proceedings are more readily accessible to industry groups than to consumer groups. Part III also addresses the potential effects—direct or indirect—that internationally set pesticide standards could have on U.S. regulatory decisions.
Part IV reviews the U.S. regulatory scheme for pesticides and examines some of the ways in which the participation of consumer and environmental groups can and does affect the U.S. standard-setting process. It concludes with a look at how the American public would regard internationally set standards negotiated beyond the public eye.
By acceding to a GATT agreement which created incentives for domestic regulations to conform to international standards and which assigned standard-setting responsibility to an international body that did not provide for public participation in its decision making, American officials could compromise U.S. pesticide regulation in subtle and costly ways. Most importantly, cutting public participation out of the standard-setting process could lead to the loss of a check on the unbalanced influence of industry groups and to the loss of the resulting standard's legitimacy among the citizenry.
In their evaluation of the international movement to harmonize food safety standards, U.S. policymakers must be conscious of these implications. The absence of public participation in the international system for pesticide regulation suggests that U.S. policy makers should be unwilling to accept the internationalization of pesticide standards as it is currently envisioned in the GATT.
Since the New Deal, public participation in governmental decision making has been central to the legitimacy of the growing administrative state in the United States. As the global economy grows and regulatory decision making moves to international bodies, the role of public participation in government affairs has become an important international issue. This Note examines how public participation fits into current initiatives emerging from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to “harmonize” national pesticide residue standards.
World trade policy negotiators are currently seeking to reduce the trade-inhibiting potential of national health and environmental regulations. Present GATT draft proposals offer new ways to resolve conflicts over whether domestic regulations are legitimate barriers to trade. Environmental and consumer advocates fear that the international effort to reduce trade barriers will weaken national environmental standards.
Of particular concern is the effect of negotiations on food safety standards. By imposing strict pesticide residue limits, a nation can prevent entry of competing food product imports into the domestic market. Previous international efforts to prohibit “unnecessary” regulation have failed to resolve trade disputes like the one sparked by the European Community's rejection of American beef raised with the aid of a hormone additive.
International efforts have recently focused on preempting such disputes by “harmonizing” national standards and thus promoting international standards to which countries would agree. Proposals developed during the recent Uruguay Round of the GATT have sought to establish international standards set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission as a baseline for trade disputes over food safety issues.
The proposed international standard-setting process is in some respects similar to American standard setting. Important differences between the two systems, however, may create substantive discrepancies in standards for pesticide residues on food. Although no one has charged U.S. officials with establishing pesticide regulations to prevent trade, the proposed GATT regime would allow an importer to challenge those U.S. regulations that exceeded international standards as unfair barriers to trade. The United States is a major food importer and has one of the most extensive systems of pesticide regulation in the world; U.S. standards could be challenged as prohibitively high. Also, as the world's largest food exporter, the United States has a strong interest in preventing food safety standards from becoming trade barriers.
Aside from the threat of reduced standards, however, the process by which the Codex formulates regulations fails to assimilate the democratic principles reflected in the U.S. pesticide regulatory regime. Specifically, the Codex process does not recognize that the public should check industry influence on decision making and that only by accommodating public participation can an institution legitimately impose regulations in a democratic society.
Part II of this Note explains the role pesticide regulations can play as trade barriers and describes past attempts to cure trade-inhibiting regulations. It also describes the developing role of the Codex Alimentarius Commission—the organization charged by the draft GATT agreement with maintaining international baseline standards for food safety—in the movement toward harmonization.
Part III discusses the standard-setting process of the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its Pesticide Residue Committee. It explores the political nature of international standard setting and, in particular, how the Codex Commission's proceedings are more readily accessible to industry groups than to consumer groups. Part III also addresses the potential effects—direct or indirect—that internationally set pesticide standards could have on U.S. regulatory decisions.
Part IV reviews the U.S. regulatory scheme for pesticides and examines some of the ways in which the participation of consumer and environmental groups can and does affect the U.S. standard-setting process. It concludes with a look at how the American public would regard internationally set standards negotiated beyond the public eye.
By acceding to a GATT agreement which created incentives for domestic regulations to conform to international standards and which assigned standard-setting responsibility to an international body that did not provide for public participation in its decision making, American officials could compromise U.S. pesticide regulation in subtle and costly ways. Most importantly, cutting public participation out of the standard-setting process could lead to the loss of a check on the unbalanced influence of industry groups and to the loss of the resulting standard's legitimacy among the citizenry.
In their evaluation of the international movement to harmonize food safety standards, U.S. policymakers must be conscious of these implications. The absence of public participation in the international system for pesticide regulation suggests that U.S. policy makers should be unwilling to accept the internationalization of pesticide standards as it is currently envisioned in the GATT.
