Quality along the Value Chain: Private Standards

Private and sustainability standards, usually developed by private sector firms and consortia, are quicker to market, and in many cases serve the business interests of their developers better than international standards do. Market realities and increasingly internationalized value chains force players to agree standards amongst each other and require international harmonization. The pace of these developments will quicken in the years to come as value chains become even more internationalized.

Private standards however are very numerous, sometimes contradicting each other and are often not well known by those that are not yet part of international value chains. Development partners, in cooperation with private sector fora, have started to facilitate the harmonization of private standards in areas such as food safety, but there is still much work to do.

Private Standards development is driven by:

  • Consumer Awareness: the building-up of health and safety concerns in industrialized countries (such as food safety, use of chemicals, working conditions, etc.) resulted in an environment where not only the government regulations have become stricter, but the retailers/supermarket chains have started to drive the trend for stringent standards due to consumer awareness.
  • Suppliers: reputation and brand protection, global sourcing, differentiation in the marketplace, control and rationalization of supply, synergies in usage of same technologies.
  • Awareness: in general, there is increasing awareness about standards and technical regulations due to the World Trade Organization agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS).