Recently, developed countries have implemented stringent food safety standards, and evoked serious concerns among upstream end players in developing countries that have the weakest bargaining position in the export value chain of fish and fishery products. This study demonstrates the sectoral impacts of stricter international food safety standards on the fishery sector of Kerala. The dominant response-by both the government and the private sector-to the imposition of stricter food safety standards on fish exports from Kerala has been reactive and defensive. Hygiene and standard controls have been upgraded mostly in response to a regulatory change in the EU and US or at the demand of major customers. When the EU threatened to curtail market access, Kerala responded immediately by upgrading hygiene controls. But the standards environment in the case of fish and fishery products is dynamic and evolving; and to be in the business, we need to be scientifically competent to challenge the sudden imposition by other countries of stricter food safety regulations without adequate evidence of the risk assessment.
