The Example of Standards for the Food Sector

Safety and quality of food are receiving increased attention, and are on the agenda of many countries and internationally. Food standards have since decades played an important role in both the protection of health and safety of consumers, ensuring fair trade practices and facilitation of international trade. Many countries are imposing increasingly stringent standards or requirements for protecting the health and safety of their populations from products produced domestically as well as those imported. This chapter clarifies issues related to food standards starting from an understanding of the role, importance and requirements of the WTO SPS/TBT Agreements, different terminologies that are being used across countries to define standards, types of standards, basic good principles or practices of standards development, an institutional framework for standards with specific reference to India and issues and challenges being faced by countries in relation to standards.