Paper's abstract

Maryvonne Lassalle-de Salins, Normes alimentaires mondiales, commerce international et entreprises agroalimentaires
This chapter first recalls the multiplicity and diversity of standards in the food industry and focuses on major standards of global influence. Although organizations that develop these various types of global standards are independent of each other, they maintain relations between them, and are even invited to collaborate more closely. Afterwards we discuss the links between global norms and the rules of international trade. The agreements of the World Trade Organization on Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Measures and Technical Barriers to trade have made the intergovern-mental Codex Alimentarius an international reference when solving disputes. For their part, established downstream to govern the relations between suppliers, the standards for the mass marketing sector are private ones. Their prominence in global trade is a concern for developing countries and leads intergovernmental organizations to worry about the compatibility of private standards with state standards, as well as their effects on exports. Finally, we discuss the role of agribusiness in the development of global standards, including ISO and Codex Alimentarius. We present the different steps where companies can intervene and their main activities to enforce their views.

Key Words : lobbying, Codex Alimentarius, food norms, Iso
t. 56, 2013 : p. 197-228