SPS Agreement Principles

Equivalence

Under the SPS Agreement, countries are required to recognize another country's SPS measure as equivalent to their own when the exporting country demonstrates that its treatments or pest control procedures provide the importing country's desired level of quarantine security.

Equivalence encourages countries to recognize that different procedures (e.g., inspection, certification, testing, surveying, trapping, fumigation, and other treatments or practices) can be used to achieve the level of protection demanded by the importing country. The burden is on the exporting country to objectively demonstrate that its system or practices, while different from the importing country's measures, still achieves the importing country's plant quarantine security goals.