Establishing an SPS notification authority and enquiry point

1.2 Establishing an SPS enquiry point

Responsibilities of the SPS enquiry point  back to top

The enquiry point is responsible for answering all reasonable questions and providing relevant documents regarding:

1. any sanitary or phytosanitary regulations adopted or proposed within the country;
    
2. any control and inspection procedures, production and quarantine treatment, pesticide tolerance and food additive approval procedures, which are operated within the country;
    
3. risk assessment procedures, factors taken into consideration, as well as the determination of the appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection;
    
4. the membership and participation of the country, or of relevant bodies within its territory, in international and regional sanitary and phytosanitary organizations and systems;
   
5. the membership and participation of the country in bilateral and multilateral agreements and arrangements within the scope of the SPS Agreement; and,
    
6. the texts of any such agreements and arrangements.

Enquiry points should also provide, upon request, information on participation in any bilateral or multilateral equivalence agreements and arrangements.

While the notification authority may handle questions on notified draft measures, the enquiry point is responsible for answering questions on all existing SPS measures (even those that existed before the WTO and the SPS Agreement came into force).

 

Choice of agency  back to top

The enquiry point system was created so that countries could easily obtain information about SPS and related issues, without having to identify and directly contact the agency responsible for any given function in another country. The enquiry point is the single contact point to which any relevant enquiries can be made. It has the responsibility of obtaining the answers from the relevant national bodies and replying to the country making the enquiry.

The task of establishing an enquiry point is not a very difficult one. Most countries already have existing government departments or agencies responsible for handling the areas covered in the SPS Agreement, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, or for disseminating government information. The agency designated as the enquiry point should have relationships with officials in the areas of food safety, animal and plant health so that any answers to any requests can be readily obtained. Some countries have indicated a willingness to help developing countries to set up their enquiry points. For more information about this contact the WTO Secretariat.

Some countries have found it an advantage to have the same body operating both the national notification authority and enquiry point. The principal benefit of such an arrangement is to minimize the impact on financial and physical resources and to build up trade policy expertise in this area in a dedicated unit. In addition, it eliminates the need for coordination between the notification authority and enquiry point. A possible downside to this is the workload. While the workload associated with processing and distributing SPS notifications and answering overseas requests is not particularly onerous, depending on the size and workload of the existing body, this could put an additional strain on already finite resources.

There are two common choices for selecting an agency to operate the SPS enquiry point:

1. an existing standards information office; or
    
2. a government department that is most concerned with the responsibilities covered by the SPS Agreement (i.e. food safety, animal health, plant health).
     

The enquiry point does not necessarily have to be a government office, it could be contracted to an independent body. Nor does the enquiry point necessarily have to have officials who can themselves answer any requests made by other countries. The primary role of the enquiry point is to manage this part of the transparency process: that is, to obtain answers from the relevant government bodies — as quickly as possible — and provide them to the countries requesting the information. Alternatively, the relevant government body could respond directly to the requestor, with the enquiry point providing oversight.