While the consultation recognized that a wide range of standards can be applied in livestock food chains, relating to animal health, food safety and other technical requirements, the discussion focused on standards encompassed by the SPS agreement. These have a well developed institutional infrastructure including formal international regulations as well as nationally and locally applied standards.
SPS standards derive from the need to maintain animal health and food safety when countries trade livestock and livestock products internationally. Without international standards, many countries would adopt a ‘zero-risk’ policy and would use unnecessarily stringent precautionary measures as a sanitary barrier to trade. The imposition of international standards provides a basis for negotiation and guidance based on the best assessments of the science available.
The issue at stake is the identification of hazards and management of risk for countries and people. SPS standards and regulations are one measure within a risk management strategy for livestock and public health.
Since the consultation believes that setting and application of standards is an element of risk management, it follows that standards should be evaluated within a risk management framework. This framework would encompass the definition of hazards, identification and assessment of risk, as well as the development of a strategy to manage risk elements and risk communication.
Animal health and food safety are affected by events that occur throughout the food chain (using the term in a market rather than physical sense), from input supply to consumer. Therefore, the development and enforcement of SPS standards needs to reflect risk along the whole food chain. FAO acknowledges the relevance of a food chain approach to food safety:
“…recognition that the responsibility for the supply of food that is safe, healthy and nutritious is shared along the entire food chain - by all involved with the production, processing, trade and consumption of food. This approach encompasses the whole food chain from primary production to final consumption. Stakeholders include farmers, fishermen, slaughterhouse operators, food processors, transport operators, distributors (wholesale and retail) and consumers, as well as governments obliged to protect public health. The holistic approach to food safety along the food chain differs from previous models in which responsibility for safe food tended to concentrate on the food processing sector.”
FAO, 2003a
In order to assess impact on the poor, it is important to use an approach that takes into account participation and distributional impacts. A value chain approach can be used to good effect:
“The value chain describes the full range of activities which are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the different phases of production… delivery to final consumers, and final disposal after use. (Kaplinsky and Morris, 2000)…
“…the emergence of ‘value chains’ as the foremost organizational arrangement in global food markets. In contrast with a ‘supply chain’ dynamic, where production is often insensitive to market requirements and the focus is exclusively on efficient logistics, a value chain is demand-driven. A value chain recognises the real opportunities that all participants have to contribute and to increase product value through skilful management in meeting market requirements.” GRDC (2003)
“a vertical alliance or strategic network between a number of independent business organizations within a supply chain. A value chain is created when organizations have a shared vision and common goals. It is formed to meet specific market objectives through satisfying the needs of consumers.” (Hobbs, Cooney and Fulton, 2000).
There are several definitions of value chains and value chain approaches. Important work was done by Porter in the 1980s who defined parallel value and support chains. The “Filière” approach is essentially a value chain one. The relevance of the approach is that it takes into account value changes along the chain, providing a distributional dimension, and it also considers the participation of different actors, bringing into focus the governance and control of the chain.
For the present discussion, food chains (and possibly value chains) were typified as follows:
With illegal standards set by agreement between producer and consumer, there may be no compliance with national or international standards. Examples of this include:
There has been little work done to make a systematic typification of livestock value chains. This would be a valuable starting point for analysis of the impact of standards.
The consultation addressed two dimensions of poverty - developing countries and poor people.
Developing countries (notably Low-Income Countries or LICs) need to be singled out for special consideration because of:
The poor within a country will experience the effect of standards in a variety of ways. Their point of participation in the value chain (production, trading, wholesaling, processing, consumption) may affect the way that they experience the impact of standards more than their physical location (e.g. rural/urban). Different levels of poverty can be seen and have been formally defined. They include the destitute (often described as below the poverty line, which in the international definition means having an income of less than $1 a day) as well as those who are not destitute but are still vulnerable.
It is accepted that there are poor people within rich and middle-income countries. FAO's priority reflects the Millennium Development Goals and is likely therefore to place most emphasis on poor people within the poorest countries. However, the consultation did not consider it appropriate to place strict boundaries around the poor for the purpose of this discussion.
