농식품 분야의 소비자정보와 라벨링 관련 국제무역 규범 연구

Abstract

The theoretical focus of the WTO is regulating government’s policies to impose tradebarriers in response to producer’s requests for protection. Recently, demands for importprotection have tremendously come from consumers over issues ranging from environmentalstandards and GM food, animal welfare concerns, employment of child labor, use of growthhormones, beef presumably infected with mad cow disease. WTO, the current internationaltrade regime, administering within either SPS or TBT appears to be inadequate in dealingwith consumer oriented protectionism. The paper thus attempts to analyze the effects of GMlabelling on economic welfare and compare the results between labelling policy and importembargo. We develop a model that incorporates consumer concerns into an international trademodel and compare the results with producer concerns. Based on the model, we show that alabelling policy is found to be superior to an import embargo. Implications are drawn forbetter trade policy pertaining to SPS and TBT and these are followed up with suggestions forimproving consumer policy such as providing correct consumer information about GM food.