Private and public milk standards in Argentina and Brazil Elizabeth M.M.Q. Farina a , Graciela E. Gutman b,c , Pablo J. Lavarello c , Rubens Nunes a , T. Reardon d, * a Universidade de Sa ˜o Paulo, Brazil b CONICET (National Council on Science and Technology), Argentina c Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina d Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States Abstract This article focuses on the development of public and private standards for milk as an input to the dairy processing sector in Argentina and Brazil. From 1950 to 1990, the dominant trend was the development of public standards for basic safety and hygiene of milk. These induced the incipient modernization of dairy farming, post harvest, and processing technologies, even though implementation of the regulations was only partial. The dairy sectors were liberalized and privatized circa 1990. This spurred the rapid rise of private standards set by large proces- sors over the 1990s and into the 2000s. These standards are much more stringent than public standards, and induced rapid concentration at the processing and farm levels due to stiff invest- ment requirements. In Brazil, private standards were set mainly to drive down costs in the sup- ply chain in order to reduce the consumer prices in the mass commodities market. In Argentina, private standards were used to develop quality differentiation in the product market. In both countries, in the 2000s a debate has emerged on new roles and approaches for public standards. Ó 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Grades and standards; Milk; Argentina; Brazil 0306-9192/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2005.05.008 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 517 355 1521; fax: +1 517 432 1800. E-mail addresses: emmqfari@usp.br (E.M.M.Q. Farina), gutmang@fibertel.com.ar (G.E. Gutman), p.lavarello@free.fr (P.J. Lavarello), rnunes@usp.br (R. Nunes), reardon@msu.edu (T. Reardon). Food Policy 30 (2005) 302–315 www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol