All hands on deck

Robust lobbying by individual CARICOM countries is needed to ensure that political heads across the region recognise and appreciate the importance of improving legislation, as it relates to sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures.

That’s the view of Dr. Janet Lawrence, Project Manager of the SPS Project, which aims to create draft model Agricultural, Health and Food Safety legislation that can be used by CARICOM countries to formulate their own national legislation in those areas.

In a recent interview with The Barbados Advocate, she maintained that the countries in the region must comply with the SPS measures, which seek to protect people, plants and animals from risks posed by food borne illnesses, pests, diseases and contaminants, in order to successfully export their products to international markets.

“What we will need to have is really strong country endorsement, and that means the technocrats really lobbying and ensuring that people at the political level are aware of the legislation and what it means, and therefore, what it is we require of them at the level of CARICOM.

“Without support on the ground, without it being pushed at the technical level, the policy level and the political level, we will not be able to make the impact we need to have. So we are urging all the stakeholders to

think of their roles and responsibilities, as efforts are made to have the legislation adopted,” she said.

Adding to Lawrence’s comments, Carol Thomas, Technical Lead with the SPS Project, explained that given that the SPS measures are in fact trade regulations, the private sector, including the sellers, traders, exporters, individual producers and processors, need to be “brought into the whole scheme of things” so that they too can engage in lobbying.

“We are hoping with that additional awareness at the policy making level, plus lobbying from the private sector saying we need to have these measures in place so we can access international markets and sell locally, because it has implications for local markets as well, that they will help to push the process forward and ensure that the model legislation does not get put in File 13,” Thomas said. (JRT)