The book studies the regulation of the food and beverage industry (F&B) in and by all leading regional trade agreements (RTAs) in the world. It critically evaluates the institutions, rules, and dispute settlement processes used to regulate F&B in older RTAs, such as United States-Mexico-Canada USMCA, Southern Common Market Mercosur/Mercosul, European Union EU, and Europe-Asia Economic Union EAEU, and also focuses on rapidly evolving or more recently established RTAs, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area AfCFTA, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership RCEP, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN. It discusses specific examples of major F&B companies to see if they comply or purport to comply with three indicators of healthy food: front-of-pack labelling; environmental, social and governance ESG compliance and the UN Sustainable Development Goals; and the avoidance of highly processed food HPF. It advances specific proposals to companies and to consumers to help achieve the goal of healthy food. The book marshals a sophisticated legal perspective, detailed economic knowledge of major F&B multinational companies worldwide, and constructive and cutting-edge proposals to such companies about providing consumers with up-to-date information to enable them to choose healthy food.

Francis Snyder is C.V. Starr Professor of Law Emeritus, EU Jean Monnet Professor ad personam, and formerly Director of the Center for Research on Transnational Law, Peking University, China. He is also Founder and Co-Director of the Pearl River Delta Academy of International Trade and Investment Law (PRAIA), based in Macau. He is Honorary Full Professor of Law at the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium, Adjunct Professor at the University of Macau, and Emeritus Professor at the CERIC, Aix-Marseille University. He also previously held a part-time Special Endowed Chair Professorship for Food Safety at Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry (NWAFU), Yangling, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, where he served as Research Director on Food Policy and Law at the Sino-US Joint Research Centre for Food Safety (JRC). Among past international appointments, Professor Snyder served as Dean of the Law Department and Co-Director of the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute Florence and Professor of European Law at University College London and later as Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. In 2000-2001 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg), Berlin. In 2003 he co-directed the Centre for Research at the Hague Academy of International Law. He was the first Robert Schuman Professor under the EU-China Higher Education Cooperation Programme and served as Academic Director of the British Council team that was the leader in the EU-China Legal and Judicial Cooperation Programme that led to the foundation of the China-EU Law School in Beijing. In 2018 he was awarded the Friendship Award of Peking University and the Friendship Award of the People’s Republic of China.

Professor Snyder is a scholar of European Union law, WTO and international economic law, EU-China relations, technical standards, anti-dumping, and food safety law. His most recent book is Food Safety Law in China: Making Transnational Law (2016, Leiden: Brill). This book was awarded two prestigious prizes at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2017: ‘Best in the World’ in the Category ‘Law Books’, and ‘Best in the World’ in the Category ‘Food Safety Institutions’. He is the founder (in 1995) and editor-in-chief (until January 2014) of the European Law Journal, which pioneered the study of EU law in its social context.