Safety First
Harmonizing phytosanitary standards is one of the most nettlesome issues of international trade. A case in point: The European Union (EU) routinely annoys its overseas trading partners by evoking a "precautionary principle" that restricts imports of various foods whose safety the scientific community cannot verify with 100 percent certainty. Now, a recent World Bank paper, ...
Harmonizing phytosanitary standards is one of the most nettlesome issues of international trade. A case in point: The European Union (EU) routinely annoys its overseas trading partners by evoking a "precautionary principle" that restricts imports of various foods whose safety the scientific community cannot verify with 100 percent certainty. Now, a recent World Bank paper, "Saving Two in a Billion," by Tsunehiro Otsuki, John S. Wilson, and Mirvat Sewadeh, raises further questions about the EU’s approach.
Harmonizing phytosanitary standards is one of the most nettlesome issues of international trade. A case in point: The European Union (EU) routinely annoys its overseas trading partners by evoking a "precautionary principle" that restricts imports of various foods whose safety the scientific community cannot verify with 100 percent certainty. Now, a recent World Bank paper, "Saving Two in a Billion," by Tsunehiro Otsuki, John S. Wilson, and Mirvat Sewadeh, raises further questions about the EU’s approach.
One of the latest additions to the eu culinary blacklist is a group of chemicals called aflatoxins that are produced by fungi and have been found in corn, groundnuts, cottonseed, Brazil nuts, pecans, pistachios, and walnuts. High levels of aflatoxins have been linked to liver cancer, although researchers have not shown a causal relationship.
Operating under the principle of better safe than sorry, the EU has put severe limits on the levels of aflatoxins that can enter its borders — restrictions that are significantly tighter than those recommended by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Codex Alimentarius Commision, which is responsible for setting international food safety standards.
The World Bank study estimates that the more onerous restrictions could reduce imports of cereals, dried fruits, and nuts from Chad, Gambia, Sudan, Mali, Nigeria, Egypt, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and South Africa by more than half, costing these countries almost $700 million in revenue (an amount equivalent to a significant chunk of annual EU development assistance to these same nine countries).
But what about the health benefits? The study calculates that aflatoxins restrictions will save 1.4 lives per 1 billion people. Put another way, this decisive action on the part of the EU, which has a population of about 375 million, will save half a European life.
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