When Quality Management Helps Agri-food Firms to Export

From the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy outbreak in the 90's to the milk powder scandal in China in 2008, food safety incidents have led to an increasing demand for traceability and safety of food products, from both consumers and distributors. Governments have answered to this demand by strengthening public regulation on their territory (see for example the European Community Regulation 178/2002 on food traceability) or by increasing the number of Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures (SPS) and Technical barriers to trade (TBT) at the border. The private sector also implemented several certifications to facilitate the standardization of safety and traceability (HACCP, ISO standards) or to manage the buyer-supplier relationship (IFS, BRC retailers standards). Therefore, the ability to make safe products, to ensure traceability and to have it recognized through certifications appears to be an essential element of the international competitiveness of agri-food companies. Even if these characteristics are not systematically observed by final consumers, they may help to access to markets with high levels of sanitary requirements or enable to benefit from international retailer networks. In this paper, we investigate the effects of firms' commitment to traceability and food safety on export performance. We rely on the presence of quality management and control personnel in agri-food firms to proxy their level of commitment to product reliability and safety issues. Quality management and control personnel ensure that the firms' goods are safe and reliable, that they meet customers' expectation and that they follow regulatory requirements. Quality managers are therefore major players in the firm's quality policy, both by preventing failure and by copying with those that do occur. They are key in the adoption of standards and in their maintenance. Working both with the firms' other employees and with external partners such as suppliers, customers, health inspectors or custo(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)