Measuring the complexity of complying with phytosanitary standard: the case of French and Chilean fresh apples

Nowadays, complying with technical, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations and standards is becoming more and more demanding due to their proliferation and increasing complexity. Consequently, increasing requirements in plant health protection and food safety can lead to a loss of competitiveness in countries that are major exporters of fresh products, causing a redistribution of the market shares in certain sectors. Exporters complying with regulatory standards benefit from better market access and avoid boarder rejection or product downgrading but incur additional costs due to additional procedures and paperwork. This is the case for French apples producers which are losing competitiveness compared to the Chilean ones on foreign markets. This situation can be partially explained by the difficulties of French exporters to comply with international SPS requirements. The aim of this article is first to make a compilation of phytosanitary requirements facing French and Chilean exporters of fresh apples, then to propose a score (hereafter phytosanitary score) which allows to assess the degree of complexity of these SPS requirements. This score is interesting as it synthesizes qualitative information in a metric which can be easily used in quantitative analysis. The results show that even if France and Chile are rather close in terms of SPS requirements, Chilean apples exporters are more capable to comply with foreign SPS requisites than the French ones.