The overall objective of the workshop is to raise awareness of the importance of the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.

The Initiative for the Americas was established by Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA) as a means of facilitating the attendance and participation of its member countries in the meetings of the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Committee) of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. The first meeting funded under this Initiative was in October 2002, and to date, delegates from Bahamas have attended 10 out of 18 such meetings.

Funding under the Initiative ended in October 2008. As a follow-up to the Initiative, IICA secured funding from the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) for a project (STDF Project #108) to develop sustainable institutional capabilities in the countries to consolidate gains made as a result of their participation in the SPS Committee, and to promote implementation of the SPS Agreement.

The first activity of the project, the collection of country-specific information took place in The Bahamas June 30 to July 1, 2008. Interviews and meetings were held with various persons drawn from the public sector and the private sector and representing the Ministries of Agriculture and Health as well as farmers, farmers’ organizations, exporters, importers and processors. The IICA PVS (Performance, Vision and Strategy) instrument for SPS was used to gather the relevant information from public and private sector representatives. Three components were assessed: (a) Interaction within the public sector and with the private sector; (b) capacity to access international markets; and (c) human and financial capital.

The second activity was a common vision event, held August 6, 2008, where representatives from the public and private sectors discussed the findings, examined the shortcomings, the limiting factors responsible for these shortcomings, agreed on priority actions and schedules and assigned responsibilities to overcome them. The results of the common vision session constitute a national implementation agenda on SPS issues.

As a follow-up to the SPS PVS done in 2008, this SPS workshop will be held in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

The overall objective of the workshop is to raise awareness (especially among policy and decision makers in both private and public sectors)of the importance of the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the SPS Agreement) as it relates to trade in food products with particular emphasis on the standard setting process of the Codex Alimentarius, the impact of such standards, the importance of participation in the international standard setting process and the role of the SPS Notification and Enquiry Point.

The workshop will also focus on good practices for participation in the various international SPS and forums. Participants at this workshop will include persons from the Bahamas and Belize

For more information, contact
ricardo.molins@iica.int