International Food Safety Regulation and processed food exports from developing countries: the policy context, and the purpose and scope of the research project

The purpose of this paper is to place the research project in the context of the ongoing global policy debate with a view to obtaining feedback from the interested parties in shaping the research strategy and facilitating their participation in the process of project implementation. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 surveys the emerging trends and patterns of processed food exports and their implications for development policy in agricultural-resource rich developing countries. Section 3 paints a broad-brush picture of the current state of the debate on trade-impeding effects of international food-safety standards and the relation world trade rules. Section 4 presents preliminary results from a study-in-progress on inter-country differences in the incidents of import detentions by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) and the underlying cause of detention. These results aim to inform the discussion on designing appropriate methods and strategies for studying the problems faced by exporting firms in India and Thailand in meeting food-safety standards and designing institutional capabilities to facilitate redressing these problems. A brief survey of the existing literature on the subject is undertaken in Section 5, with a view to placing the present study in context. The research project is discussed in the final section, focusing in turn on its objectives, approach and methodology, and the expected output.