Food safety and trade
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'Contribution to the food miles debate in New Zealand'.
This category contains a paper written for the National Business Review for March 2, 2007, and a
letter to and reply from the Minister of Agriculture on the same subject. The
position taken is that protectionist interests in New Zealand's
trading partners could take over the food miles debate and ask
their governments to introduce carbon levies on imports of food and
thus discriminate against New Zealand trade.
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Agriculture and Trade in Sub-Sahara Africa,
Outlook on Agriculture, Vol 34, (2), June 2005.
This paper is a response to a 2004 publication
of UNCTAD Trade Pperformance and Commodity Dependence. That report
concentrates on trade problems in developing economies and neglects
to bring out the preponderance of agricultural exports and the
agricultural economies that lie behind such exports. For various
reasons, Sub-Sahara Africa has not developed positively in both
agricultural production and exporting, and the reasons for this
need exploring. This paper suggests some areas which might be
investigated.
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'Political Economy, Equity and Technical Barriers to Trade'
(PDF)
This eight-page paper was presented to a pre-conference workshop on SPS at the 1999
Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource
Economics Society in Christchurch, New Zealand. The paper examines
the background bargaining that went into the SPS Agreement and
draws attention to the uneven participation of different countries
in the process and the ongoing conduct of business. The very nature
of technical standards for trade in food products mitigates against
countries with lower educational resources and control
systems.
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'Food Safety Issues, Protection and Trade',
with Jimmye Hillman and
Allen Petrey. This 19-page paper was prepared for the January 2001
conference of the International Agricultural Trade Research
Consortium (IATRC) in Auckland, New Zealand. The theme of the
conference was trade in animal products. The paper discusses
traditional meat inspection systems and how they have been updated
in recent years to conform with modern microbiological techniques,
and possible threats to the safety system from epidemics and
changes in technology. The discussion particularly covers the
hormone trade dispute between the US and the EU, the threat of
human infection from animal-borne bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE) and its effects on trade, and the possible effects on trade
of genetically modified animal products. These and other threats
are likely to cause an increase in prescriptive standards for
exports of animal products in the future with possible dire effects
on some exporting countries.
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'Prescriptive
approach to food safety in meat products', Outlook on
Agriculture, Vol 33, (3), September 2004. This paper takes up a
theme suggested by Thomas Urban. The demands for food safety are
resulting in more and more rigorous standards for trade in meat
products. In particular the system based on Hazard Analysis at
Critical Control Points (HACCP) is spreading the demand for
microbiological testing all over the world. These trends have
implications for developments in free trade and in food
safety.