Public Health Impacts of the Proposed Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement: Pharmaceuticals and Food Safety

In this submission, we demonstrate how public health in Australia could be adversely affected by the adoption of the proposed Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA). We focus on two key areas important to public health. Firstly, we examine the problems with linking Australiaís Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to trade under the AUSFTA. We use a scenario of a future dispute over listing of a new pharmaceutical to highlight the potential for direct US impact on Australiaís capacity to provide good medicines at low cost. Secondly, we discuss the potential for the AUSFTA to lower Australiaís food safety standards. We highlight problems with the interpretation of ëscience-basedí risk assessment and describe how the AUSFTA ñ and the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures more generally ñ has the capacity to weaken Australian quarantine practices, by increasing the pressure to ëharmonise downwardsí Australiaís food safety and agricultural standards. We use the case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to illustrate the past effectiveness of Australiaís cautious approach to risk assessment.