Challenges for China’s Agricultural Exports: Compliance with Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures

In the food safety arena, a clear role for government is to adopt sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures to protect human, animal, and plant life or health. Relative to developing countries, developed countries tend to adopt more stringent food safety standards and regulations with a broader scope and to rely increasingly on certification and traceability. The additional costs of compliance for meeting international SPS requirements are higher for firms operating in developing countries because they must take additional steps to meet international food safety regulations and standards. Therefore, their comparative advantage, achieved through lower production costs, will tend to be reduced because of high incremental compliance costs. Given that a high proportion of developing countries' exports are agricultural and food products and that export destinations are mainly developed countries, concerns have arisen that SPS measures are affecting developing countries' access to export markets.