Private food standards, regulatory gaps and plantation agriculture: social and environmental (ir)responsibility in the Philippine export banana industry

•Private standards and state legislation interact to produce regulatory outcomes.•We examine these interactions in the Philippine export banana industry.•Poorly enforced legislation creates regulatory failures and gaps despite standards compliance.•Failures and gaps are particularly evident in relation to environment and human rights.

The expansion of retailer-led food production standards over recent years has seen certification against such standards become a de facto condition of access to numerous supply chains. GLOBALG.A.P. standards, in particular, have extended the traditional focus of retailer-led standards beyond food safety to include compliance points addressing environmental protection and labour welfare. This has stimulated considerable research on the implications of standards compliance for small producers. However, little attention has been paid either to the relationships between so-called private standards and state-based regulatory regimes or to the implications of standards compliance for corporate farms, their employees and neighbouring communities. This paper examines these relationships and implications in the context of plantation banana production in the Philippines, focussing, in particular, on gaps that emerge between the ideals of social and environmental responsibility embodied in private standards and actual practices of regulation. It finds that while compliance with private standards is associated with comparatively favourable treatment of labour, deference to poorly enforced national legislation conceals ongoing human rights and environmental concerns.