Balancing basic human needs and free trade in the WTO

The contribution focuses on safe food with reference to the WTO multilateral trade system. The concept of food safety and its governance in international trade refers not only to multilevel protection measures which express forms of international, EU-regional or bilateral cooperation in the fight against gone bad, contaminated or conterfeit food but also on mechanism based on common criteria facilitating the international monitoring of the use of harmful substances contained in food. It also means checking the autenticity and confromity of the quality and origin indications and implies the mutual recognition of standards and national certifications in view of limiting their restrictive effects on international trade. All this implies that trade restrictions fostering at enhancing the access to adequate food and the right to health are not looked at as obstacles to international trade in the meaning of WTO rules and practices. In this perspective the contribution approaches the question of the role of WTO in relation to the issue of food safety as a one which requires the balancing of economic interests and basic human needs in international trade.