The Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, which began in Punta del Este in September 1986, concluded in Marrakech in April 1994 [3]. The Marrakech Agreement established a new World Trade Organization (WTO) to succeed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The Uruguay Round negotiations were the first to deal with the liberalization of trade in agricultural products, an area excluded from previous Rounds of negotiations. The Uruguay Round also included negotiations on reducing non-tariff barriers to international trade in agricultural products and concluded with two binding Agreements: the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the SPS Agreement) and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (the TBT Agreement). The Agreements will be applied by members of the WTO.

The SPS Agreement confirms the right of WTO member countries to apply measures necessary to protect human, animal, and plant life and health. This right was included in the original 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as a general exclusion from the other provisions of the Agreement, provided that "such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade." Despite this general condition for the application of national measures to protect human, animal, and plant life and health, it had become apparent by the time of the Punta del Este Declaration that national sanitary and phytosanitary measures had become, whether by design or accident, effective trade barriers.

The SPS Agreement, therefore, sets new rules in an area previously excluded from GATT disciplines. The purpose of the SPS Agreement is to ensure that measures established by governments to protect human, animal, and plant life and health in the agricultural sector only are consistent with obligations prohibiting arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination on trade between countries where the same conditions prevail, or which are a disguised restriction on international trade. It requires that, with regard to food-safety measures, WTO members base their national measures on international standards, guidelines, and other recommendations adopted by the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission where they exist, except that they may adopt stricter measures if there is a scientific justification for doing so or if the level of protection afforded by the Codex standard is inconsistent with the level of protection generally applied and deemed appropriate by the country concerned. The SPS Agreement covers all food-hygiene measures and food-safety measures, such as the control of residues of veterinary drugs, pesticides, or other chemicals used in meat production,

The SPS Agreement states that any measures taken that conform to international Codex standards, guidelines, or other recommendations are deemed to be appropriate, necessary, and non-discriminatory. Furthermore, the SPS Agreement calls for a programme of harmonization of national requirements based on international standards. This work is guided by a WTO Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures to which representatives of Codex Alimentarius, the Office International des Epizes (OIE), and the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) are invited.