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Daniella Burdett International Business October 18, 2011 Global Trade Deficit in Food Safety 1. Countries like Mexico that export a high volume of food to the United States might not like the stricter food-safety rules because they incur cost and change, but they will ultimately follow them because the United States does import a large majority of their food and a lot of the underdeveloped countries are reliant on those exports to the United States.
There is no doubt that stricter policies would help contain the number of food-related illnesses but after the implementation of the policy, there would have to be constant inspections to ensure they are still following procedure and constant research and development to prevent new and mutated food-related illnesses. While the stricter policies alone cannot stop the transfer of food-related illnesses into the country, it can certainly help reduce the number. 2.
Adding food-safety regulations into an extension of NAFTA is a good strategy in the quest to prevent food-related illnesses in imported foods. NAFTA does make is easier to trade and encourages faster, more frequent trade that cannot be monitored as well. Adding food-safety regulations can help NAFTA continue to be a positive and effective pact, while also making it safer for the people that consume the food that is traded under the agreement. NAFTA is a great opportunity for the countries in North America, but should not thrive at the expense of innocent consumers.
The extension will benefit the innocent consumers by helping ensure their safety when ingesting food traded through NAFTA. A drawback of adding the extension to NAFTA is losing some of the advantages that are a part of the agreement like fast, easy, and cheap trade. Adding food-safety regulations will add more time to the trading process and more hurdles that producers have to jump to ensure their products adding time and cost to their processes. . A major concern in international food trade is the different types of food-related illnesses that can be introduced into a new country that has no immunity to the virus. In a certain country, the people may be exposed to certain parasites or viruses that they are immune to and that do not harm their bodies, but may cause serious damage to people in other countries that do not have any immunity to the illnesses. Also, ifferent types of parasites and diseases that are contained to a geographical area can be spread to new countries and containment their crops and foods. Another obstacle is the different levels of development of the countries involved in international trade, some countries may not have the technology or the money to invest in better food-safety regulations and therefore can be banned from trade, making it even harder to prosper and make improvements.