9 Trade Effects of Private and Public European Food Safety Standards on Horticultural Imports from Kenya

Abstract

This chapter investigates to what extent private and public European food safety standards affect European imports of a key high-value horticultural product such as green beans from Kenya. First, we estimate the ad valorem tariff equivalents of these nontariff measures (NTMs) for the main European importing countries using an extension of the price-wedge method. Second, we embed these estimated tariff equivalents into a gravity model. We find that the trade effects of these measures during the period 1990–2011 move from being positive in the beginning of the period to being increasingly negative from 1995 until 2003 and then tend to vanish at the end of the period as if Kenyan suppliers have progressively adjusted their trade to these NTMs. We also show that the establishment of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the East African Community stimulates that trade with European countries.