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ated to decrease African exports of these products by 64 percent or US$670 million, in contrast to less stringent 15 (ppb) total aflatoxins established by Codex Alimentarius.

 

The Impact of Private Standards for Exporters

 

From the point of view of exporters, private standards can be considered to have different effects than mandatory regulations. First of all, this is due to the different economic rationales behind their implementation. Mandatory regulations provide public goods such as food safety, animal, plan, and human life and health, whereas reputation and product differentiation or employing private standards. In the case of private standards, individual firms or coalitions of firms are sending a safety and quality signal to consumers and can differentiate themselves from domestic and foreign competitors. In the case of national mandatory regulations, the country sends a signal on behalf of all firms domiciles in that country, so firms can only differentiate themselves from foreign competitors. Mandatory multilateral regulations do not provide any opportunity to the firms for differentiation. Fulponi (2006) finds out in a study based on interviews with quality and safety directors of major retailers in OECD countries that the key asset for current and future profits is to provide consumers with and sell products that meet consistent safety and quality standards that go beyond the minimum requirements. Henson and Humphrey (2009) indentify two distinct ways how private standards, developed by firms or coalitions of firms, go beyond public regulations. First, the increased power of consumers and their awareness of differing production and distribution systems: while such claims for quality and safety can be made by any food business operator, the introduction of standards and certification provide assurances to both food business operators and consumers that the superior attributes indicated by the standards are indeed present. This is particularly important when the attributes (for example, organic production methods, or non-use of child labour) cannot be verified by either the retailer or the consumer at the point of sale. Second, the development of private standard schemes by coalitions of food business operators as a means of ensuring that public standards are met: the function of the standard is to specify methods of controlling production and processing to ensure that products conform to public regulations. The assumption is that public enforcement of regulations in the exporting country is not sufficiently reliable to ensure that public regulations are met. The development of private standard schemes aimed at meeting public regulations is clearly seen in schemes aimed at controlling use of pesticides in order to meet EU regulations.

 

A second reason for the different impacts of private standards and mandatory regulations are the different public legal frameworks standards and regulations have to adhere to. Private standards are subject to national commercial and civil legal codes and not to multilateral WTO rules, thus their legal framework is not directly geared towards the expanding of 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。