FDA Cooperative Agreement to Support World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF)

The Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) is a unique global partnership established by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).  The STDF supports developing countries in building their capacity to implement international sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards, guidelines and recommendations to improve their human, animal and plant health status and ability to gain or maintain access to markets.  In achieving its aims, the STDF acts both as a coordinating and a financing mechanism. 

The STDF is a widely established knowledge platform for information exchange, sharing experiences and the identification and dissemination of good practice on SPS-related technical cooperation. Since 2004, over 60 projects and 52 project preparation grants have assisted developing countries to overcome SPS constraints and gain and maintain market access. Over 50% have benefited least developed and other low-income countries.

STDF supports global research on improving best practices to build effective food safety systems in low- and middle-income countries.  This includes research and analysis about what works best and how effective a proposed food safety program is conducted.  STDF measures effectiveness through 1) metrics incorporated into each grant proposal and 2) post grant evaluations conducted by third party groups.  Lessons learned are incorporated into future food safety decision making and into STDF open resource materials.

STDF utilizes a key decision-support tool, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), to help establish SPS priorities and ensure resources are used as efficiently as possible. The use of the MCDA tool is unique within the STDF and is a highly-valued attribute; the MCDA tool facilitates an open and transparent discussion among public and private stakeholders about capacity-building needs and resources. The STDF is committed to the Paris Principles on Aid Effectiveness and to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

With an increasingly diverse and complex global food supply, FDA’s interest is to strengthen food safety systems globally to prevent food safety problems rather than merely reacting to problems after they occur.  FDA recognizes that it cannot do this alone.  By leveraging with other WTO member countries and partnering with the STDF, the FDA can broaden the reach of food safety capacity building efforts.  

This Cooperative Agreement will allow FDA to deepen its international food safety capacity building partnerships, provide a wider scope of impact than exists currently and leverage resources with other countries.