The impacts of food safety standards on China's tea exports

There have been growing concerns about the effects of food safety standards on agricultural trade throughout the world. The objective of this paper is to assess the impacts of food safety standards on tea exports from China, the world's largest tea producer and exporter. To achieve this objective, the paper discusses the trends and nature of China's tea production and export, analyzes changes on tea safety standards indicated by Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, Maximum Residual Limit (MRL) of pesticides and the coverage of tea safety standards concerning regulatory pesticides in major importing countries, and quantitatively estimates the impacts of food safety standards on China's tea export based on a gravity model. The results show that the MRL of pesticides (e.g., endosulfan, fenvalerate and flucythrinate) imposed by importing countries have significantly affected China's tea exports. The results also show that China's tea exports have been significantly restricted when importing countries increase coverage of tea safety standards concerning regulatory pesticides. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.