EFFECT OF WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION’S AGRICULTURE AGREEMENT, COMMON AGRICULTURE POLICY AND CHAPTER 12 ON TURKISH FOOD LEGISLATION: HARMONIZATION AND ACHIEVEMENT

Abstract

Turkey is a bridge between two continents with its geopolitical location, agriculture based economy and wide agricultural lands which causes global and local changes to influence the country at a significantly higher level. National food legislations are evidently affected by globalization of agriculture and livestock politicies, and as a European Union (EU) candidate country, renovation and revisions were applied for harmonization. To this aim, Turkey not only harmonizes the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agriculture Agreement on competitive trade in agricultural products, but also tries to accommodate the legislations and regulations with EU Common Agriculture Politics (CAP), despite of the fact that CAP regulations are at times in complete contrast with Turkey’s national agricultural policies. With these significant surrounding changes, renovations and revisions are held with the aim of strengthening the food control and food safety in Turkey. This review aims to underline the effect of global and EU level harmonization of food legislations on Turkish law numbered 5996 Veterinary, Phitosanitary, Food and Feed Law.