Global trade and food safety - winners and losers in a fragmented system

Food safety standards, and the tradeoff between these standards, and agricultural export growth, are at the forefront of the trade policy debate. How food safety is addressed in the world trade system, is critical for developing countries that continue to rely on agricultural exports. In a fragmented system of conflicting national food safety standards, and no globally accepted standards, export prospects for the least developed countries, can be severely limited. The authors examine the impact that adopting international food safety standards, and harmonizing standards would have on global food trade patterns. They estimate the effect of aflatoxin standards in fifteen importing countries (including four developing countries) on exports from thirty one countries (twenty one of them developing). Aflatoxin is a natural substance that can contaminate certain nuts, and grains when storage, and drying facilities are inadequate. The analysis shows that adopting a worldwide standard for aflatoxin B1 (potentially the most toxic of aflatoxins) based on current international guidelines, would increase nut, and cereal trade among the countries studied, by $6.1 billion, compared with 1998 levels. This harmonization of standards would increase world exports by$ 38.8 billion.Food&Beverage Industry,Health Economics&Finance,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Health Economics&Finance,Food&Beverage Industry,Economic Theory&Research

To spray or not to spray? - pesticides, banana exports, and food safety

How governments regulate food safety and environmental protection, including pesticide residue levels, has important implications for trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001, included statements on standards, and their impact on market access for developing countries. These issues will continue to be important in trade policy dialogues. It is assumed - and evidence from recent analysis confirms - that food safety standards can affect the ability of agricultural producers to meet regulatory standards, set by importing countries. The authors explore a fundamental question in food safety and environmental standards: Do regulations on pesticide have an effect on trade? They examine regulatory data from 11 OECD importing countries, and trade data from 19 exporting countries. The results suggest that a 10 percent increase in regulatory stringency - tighter restrictions on the pesticide chlorpyrifos - leads to a decrease in banana imports by 14.8 percent. This represents a significant impact on trade, and affect prospects of developing countries who continue to rely on exports of agricultural commodities, such as bananas. The findings also suggest that the lack of consensus on international standards, and divergent national regulations on pesticides is costly. For example, the authors estimate that if the world were to adopt a standard at a level of regulatory stringency suggested by Codex (the body charged with setting global standards in this area), in contrast with one set at the level in place in the European Union, there would be a U$S 5.3 billion loss in world exports.Disease Control&Prevention,Pest Management,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Pest Management,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Health Economics&Finance,Crops&Crop Management Systems

FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS AND GLOBAL FOOD TRADE PATTERNS

This study assesses the impact of adopting international food safety standards and regional harmonization of standards on global trade patterns of cereals, dried fruits and nuts. The paper develops econometric models to estimate the effect of aflatoxin standards in 15 importing countries on the export from 31 (21 developing ) countries in the world. Results are combined to predict how the direction of trade is altered by food safety regulations under alternative scenarios. Adopting international food safety standards recommended by Codex is found to increase the trade among these countries by 5.3 percent. At the level where the increase and decrease in trade flow are break-even, EU countries increase both imports and exports whereas the decrease in trade flow among developing countries outweighs the improved access of these countries to the EU market.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Regional integration in South Asia : what role for trade facilitation ?

The trade performance of countries in South Asia over the past two decades has been poor relative to other regions. Exports from South Asia have doubled over the past 20 years to approximately USD 100 billion. In contrast, East Asia's exports grew ten times over the same period. The low level of intraregional trade has contributed to weak export performance in South Asia. The empirical analysis in this paper demonstrates gains to trade in the region from reform and capacity building in trade facilitation at the regional level. When considering intraregional trade, if countries in South Asia raise capacity halfway to East Asia's average, trade is estimated to rise by USD 2.6 billion. This is approximately 60 percent of the total intraregional trade in South Asia. Countries in the region also have a stake in the success of efforts to promote capacity building outside its borders. If South Asia and the rest of the world were to raise their levels of trade facilitation halfway to the East Asian average, the gains to the region would be estimated at USD 36 billion. Out of those gains, about 87 percent of the total would be generated from South Asia's own efforts (leaving the rest of the world unchanged). In summary, we find that the South Asian region's expansion of trade can be substantially advanced with programs of concrete action to address barriers to trade facilitation to advance regional goals.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Transport and Trade Logistics,Common Carriers Industry,Trade Policy,Free Trade

Scaling Between Periodic Anderson and Kondo Lattice Models

Continuous-Time Quantum Monte Carlo (CT-QMC) method combined with Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) is used to calculate both Periodic Anderson Model (PAM) and Kondo Lattice Model (KLM). Different parameter sets of both models are connected by the Schrieffer-Wolff transformation. For degeneracy N=2, a special particle-hole symmetric case of PAM at half filling which always fixes one electron per impurity site is compared with the results of the KLM. We find a good mapping between PAM and KLM in the limit of large on-site Hubbard interaction U for different properties like self-energy, quasiparticle residue and susceptibility. This allows us to extract quasiparticle mass renormalizations for the f electrons directly from KLM. The method is further applied to higher degenerate case and to realsitic heavy fermion system CeRhIn5 in which the estimate of the Sommerfeld coefficient is proven to be close to the experimental value

Charge Generation in the Oscillating Background

The preheating after the inflation, which can be interpreted as particle creation in the oscillating inflaton background, provides a state far from thermal equilibrium. We extend the field theoretical treatment of the preheating by Linde et al. to the case of multicomponent complex scalars to show that some charges are created in this process, if C and CP are violated. A new possibility of baryogenesis based on this mechanism is also discussed.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX 2e, 3 eps figure

Scattering with Baryon Number Violation -- The Case of Higgs Particle Production --

\noindent A formalism based on path-integral expression of time-evolution operator during tunneling at a finite energy proposed by the authors is applied to $SU(2)$ gauge-Higgs system to produce Higgs particles with $\Delta B=1$. Instead of starting from instanton tunneling at the zero energy, a classical bounce solution giving sphaleron (instanton) action at high (low) energies is used as the tunneling configuration. Fourier transform of the bounce configuration in coherent state expression at the entrance and exit of the tunneling plays an important role. Numerical results at various energies for $M_H/M_W=1 \sim 2$ are given. Though the cross section with $\Delta B=1$ results from a severe cancellation of several large quantities in the leading order as occured in the instanton calculus, it seems unlikely that the cross section grows as largely as to reach unitarity bound at energies $E \leq E_{sph}$. It is pointed out that the actual value $g^2=0.418$ of the $SU(2)$ gauge coupling constant may be too large to take the weak coupling limit.}Comment: modified PHYZZX(included), 4 Figures (not included), SAGA-HE-46 : KYUSHU-HET-

BALANCING FOOD SAFETY AND RISK: DO DRUG RESIDUE LIMITS AFFECT INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN BEEF?

There have been a number of high profile food safety disputes in trade over the past decade. These include the widely publicized dispute at the World Trade Organization between the U.S. and EU over hormone treated beef. Consumers in some industrialized countries have also expressed concern over the health implications of consuming beef produced with antibiotics and other artificial supplements. Developing countries are affected in a significant way in both how disputes are settled, as well as the balance between risk and safety reflected in how standards are set. This paper examines the impact of drug residue standards on trade in beef and trade affect of setting harmonized international standards. We find that if international standards set by Codex were followed in antibiotics, global trade in beef would rise by over $3.2 billion. Among other developing countries, South African exports would rise by$160 million, Brazil by $200 million, and Argentina's by over$300 million.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Relations/Trade,

A race to the top? A case study of food safety standards and African exports

Growing concern over health risks associated with food products is at the forefront of trade policy debate. At the heart of this debate is the"precautionary principle,"which holds that precautions should be taken against health, safety, and environmental risks even whenscience has not established direct cause-and-effect relationships--as with, for example, the EUropean ban on hormone-treated beef. The authors quantify the impact on food exports from African countries of new EUropean Union standards for aflatoxins, structurally related toxic compounds that contaminate certain foods and lead to the production of acute liver carcinogens in the human body. The authors estimate the impact of changes in differing levels of such protection based on the EU standards (and suggested by international standards) for 15 EUropean countries and 9 African countries between 1989 and 1998. The results suggest that implementation of the EU's new aflatoxin standards will significantly hurt African exports to EUrope of nuts, cereals, and dried fruits, which are highly sensitive to the aflatoxin standards. The EU standards would reduce health risks by only about 1.4 deaths per billion a year but would cut African exports by 64 percent, or $670 million, compared with their level under international standards.Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Food&Beverage Industry,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT