 EU trade regulation for baby food: protecting health or trade?Federica Demaria and Sophie Drogué Post-Print from HAL Abstract: This article explores the effect of European Union (EU) food safety regulations on EU imports of baby food. Pesticides and contaminants contribute to various health problems. Children are more vulnerable to the dangers of pesticides and contaminants because as soon as they start eating solids, they consume a limited number of food items, most of which are fruits and vegetables. To protect the health of the most vulnerable part of the population, the EU regulations stipulate that no more than 0.01 mg/kg of any single pesticide residue is permitted in baby food. In this respect, the EU differs from most of its trading partners, the majority of which do not differentiate food safety regulations according to the age of the consumer. The purpose of this paper is to compare the EU regulations on maximum residue limits of pesticides to those of its major competitors through a severity index. This index is then introduced into a gravity equation to assess the impact on EU imports of baby food. We find that the EU regulation had a negative impact on the volume of trade but a positive one on the probability of setting up new trade relationships. Keywords: gravity modeling; international trade; food safety regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in The World Economy, 2017, 40 (7), pp.1430-1453. ⟨10.1111/twec.12434⟩ There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01405419 DOI: 10.1111/twec.12434 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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