The Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) ended in 1994, after 7.5 years of negotiations, with the signing of the final deed on 15 April 1994 in Marrakech, Morocco. This issue, known as the « GATT of 1994, » led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 1 January 1995. Among the agreements included in the WTO Treaty is the Agreement on the Application of Health and Plant Health Measures (SPS Agreement), which sets out the basic rules for the protection of human, animal and plant health during international trade (WTO, 1995). However, this part of the result was not authorized by Congress and the U.S. selling price was not abolished until Congress passed the results of the Tokyo Round. The results in agriculture as a whole have been poor. The most notable achievement was the agreement on a Memorandum of Understanding on the basic elements for the arrangement of global subsidies, which was eventually incorporated into a new international agreement on cereals. Managing SPS measures to reduce food-related health risks poses clear and specific challenges for developing countries, which are hampered by less access to the scientific and technical knowledge and information needed to meet these new requirements. Their difficulties do not appear to affect the international legislative process, as most developing countries do not have the financial facilities to participate in the activities of international organizations. The conditions for the production and marketing of food are highly fragmented and depend on a large number of small producers. Therefore, they are incompatible with SPS requirements such as traceability. Preliminary estimates show significant negative economic consequences of stricter trade barriers, which have resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in commodity trade.
Henson et al. indicated that the number of technical notifications to developing countries to the WTO and its predecessor, GATT, doubled between 1990 and 1998.