Hard and Soft Governance in World Food Trade: Dispute Settlement and Equivalence as Trade-facilitating Tools

An important question in (global) food governance is how trade can be facilitated without compromising legitimate objectives such as health protection. This paper addresses this question by analysing two ‘trade instruments’ available under the WTO’s SPS Agreement: equivalence and dispute settlement. Equivalence is deemed a “soft governance instrument” as it allows for the acceptance of a trading partner’s food regulations as different as long as they fulfil some commonly stated objective in a satisfactory way. Dispute settlement is viewed as a hard governance instrument because it involves the use of formalized legal procedures, including WTO authorized retaliatory measures, as a means to ensure compliance and enforcement. The papers’ main research questions thus are: How can the use of dispute settlement and equivalence affect the governance of world food trade? Under what conditions may these instruments be effective in solving trade conflicts while at the same time safeguarding legitimate concerns?