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The issue of product safety is increasingly gaining attention in the international sphere but also at the local level. In fact, there are several agreements that are being currently under force globally and which are trying to deal with this complex issue. These international instruments emerged out of the need to regulate this matter as the states have gradually tried to use the notion of product safety for achieving specific economic interests which reflected the attitude of these countries towards international trade in general but mainly the trade in particular products and even commodities. Indeed, product safety has been used for several purposes. On the one hand, there are plenty of states that are adopting measures restricting the trade in particular products originating from third countries due to the existence of product safety concerns. On the other, multiple countries are using the issue of product safety to impose trade restrictive measures without having any proof that these products pose safety risks. In this case, these nations are adopting such measures with the aim of protecting the economic interests of the local industries which would probably suffer greatly in the event such products are granted access to the local market. Both scenarios are taking place in the context of a globalized world where international trade is becoming more and more important and where the elimination of market barriers is a necessity in order to conduct the economic transactions between the different nations. Thus, the question that one could ask in this regard is whether there are legal mechanisms through which the international community would have the ability to recognize whether the imposed measures are justified under international law or hold protectionism purposes and thus must be eliminated as a result or the other state would have the possibility to impose retaliatory measures. In the Chapter “Product Safety in the Framework of the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade”, the authors Lukasz Gruszczynski, Tivadar Otvoes and Paolo Davide Farah have dealt extensively with this issue. Throughout the chapter, the authors have tried to dissect the current legal mechanisms that are being used for solving the conflict between trade rules and product safety measures while also attempting to find the common denominator between among the several conflicts that were discussed and analyzed in the chapter. In order to do so, the authors have examined multiples case laws that took place as a result of the clash between international trade rules and local or domestic legislation restricting trade in certain products out of safety concerns. This problem gets further worse when it comes to China where there have been several cases reflecting the clash between the product safety measures and international trade. Some of the cases that were examined include for instance the melamine in dogs’ pet food (2007) or in milk and infants’ formulas (2008), both imported from China. Thus, this chapter will provide a brief overview of the interplay between all these issues while taking China as a particular case study.
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