The Impact Of Food Safety Standards On China’s Imports Of Agri-food Products

At present,China has become the world’s largest importer of agricultural and food products,and a large number of foreign agricultural and food products have poured into China,which has a significant impact on the effective operation of the domestic agricultural and food products market and the life,health and safety of people.In order to ensure food safety,China has carried out several large-scale revisions to the Maximum Residue Limits(MRLs)standard in recent years.As an important food safety standard,MRLs standards will not only affect the interests of domestic consumers,but also affect foreign production enterprises,thereby affecting the development of China’s agricultural and food products import trade.Therefore,by studying the impact of food safety standards on China’s agricultural and food product imports,it is conducive to fully grasping the changes in agricultural and food product imports caused by the upgrading of food safety standards,and providing certain guidance for the formulation of food safety standards and agricultural food product import policies.Firstly,based on the literature research,this paper elaborates on the mechanism of MRLs standards affecting import trade.Secondly,the current situation of China’s imports of agricultural and food products and the evolution characteristics of MRLs standards were analyzed,and the import quality and standard strict indexes were measured by the demand information inference method and the index method.Then,a gravitational model was constructed,and the impact of MRLs standard on import quantity and import quantity was analyzed by PPML analysis method,and the impact of MRLs standard upgrade on import price and quality was analyzed from the aspects of price,quality and quality-adjusted price using the fixed-effect model.Finally,research conclusions and policy recommendations are drawn.The results show that:(1)On the whole,the upgrading of China’s MRLs standard has a promoting effect on the quantity,price and quality of agricultural and food product imports,but the overall increase in quality is small.(2)From the perspective of different income countries,the upgrade of MRLs standards has a greater impact on middle-income countries,inhibiting the increase in import quantity,but promoting quality and price upgrades;The impact on high-income countries has been to increase the volume and price of imports,but it has not promoted the upgrading of product quality from imports from high-income countries.(3)From the perspective of different product categories,it only promotes the quantity,price and quality of imports of 07 and 08 agricultural products.According to the research results,the following suggestions are put forward:(1)Further improve the construction of MRLs standard system and formulate reasonable food safety standards.(2)Further promote the quality and upgrading of imported agricultural and food products.(3)Actively explore the international market and accelerate the process of diversifying the import market.