  If the Standard Model is understood as the first term of an effective field
theory, the anomaly-cancellation conditions have to be worked out and fulfilled
order by order in the effective field-theory expansion. We bring attention to
this issue and study in detail a subset of the anomalies of the effective field
theories at the electroweak scale. The end result is a set of sum rules for the
operator coefficients. These conditions, which are necessary for the internal
consistency of the theory, lead to a number of phenomenological consequences
when implemented in analyses of experimental data. In particular, they not only
decrease the number of free parameters in different physical processes but have
the potential to relate processes with different flavor content. Conversely, a
violation of these conditions would necessarily imply the existence of
undetected non-decoupling new physics associated with the electroweak energy
scale.
