Nutrition standards, free trade and WTO

October 6th, 2014

Can you imagine that nutrition standards could be a barrier to trade? On Friday 3 October the WTO Secretariat organized a session on nutrition standards, to explore this relationship. Clémence Ross presented the Choices view: WTO can play a positive role in the fight against NCD and obesity by facilitating the international use of interpretive labelling. Such labelling should be based on voluntary nutrition standards that are internationally applicable and science based. Choices International wants to follow this path in cooperation with stakeholders who aim at making the healthy choice the easy choice.

The general opinion in the session was that interpretive labelling is there and is relevant. The discussion is about the best way to do it. Scientific substantiation, international coherence and stakeholder dialogue are the key words for implementation.

The audio of the event is available at: http://www.wto.org/audio/pf14_workshop20.mp3