We refer to these larger bodies of law for two reasons. First, compliance with international standards is an important motivation for the particular reform that we study. Achieving compliance with the Acquis has been a particularly important spur to reforms of FVA oversight procedures.<sup>11</sup> Since accession to the WTO in 2003, FYR Macedonia has amended its _Food Safety_ , _Veterinary Health_ , and _Feed Safety_ laws in an effort to comply with these larger international treaties and bodies of practice. Among other things, recent amendments to these laws provide the necessary legal backing for the reforms that we study. Second, the complex body of international agreements and law regarding international trade in SPS products highlights the existence of internationally agreed-upon best practices designed to balance trade facilitation objectives and the vital national interests related to food safety and animal health. Risk analysis and risk management approaches to oversight are central to the best practices sanctioned in the international agreements. Moreover, the agreements stipulate that oversight mechanisms should be the least trade restrictive methods that are capable of meeting national standards for animal and public health.

In light of these issues our study should be understood as more than just an attempt to establish the causal effects of a particular reform on the outcomes of interest. Our statistical investigation of the operation of sampling and testing regimes can also inform broader questions. For example, the challenges we face in acquiring data sets and making them consistent indicate weaknesses in data collection and management.<sup>12</sup> Evidence that laboratory tests rarely identify non-compliant shipments may indicate that the oversight system is more intrusive on international trade than is necessary to achieve the oversight objectives, even after the reform.<sup>13</sup> The descriptive statistical evidence that we provide about the operation of the current system can inform these questions, independent of our efforts to identify a causal impact of the reforms.

The role of border-based sampling and testing regimes within food safety systems also deserves further comment. While best-practice systems do intervene at the border, they also rely on several other mechanisms.<sup>14</sup> Mechanisms that generate private sector compliance throughout the food supply chain are

> 11 See section 3.43 of World Trade Organization (2014), an official WTO review of trade policy in FYR Macedonia. This document offers a useful (but brief) summary of the legislative changes, and notes that that the FYR Macedonian authorities recognize the need for further training on the implementation of SPS measures within the relevant agencies.

> 12 In a discussion of SPS measures and border management, van der Meer and Ignacio (2011) note that a lack of capacity in collecting and managing data is common in developing countries, and that the lack of capacities with respect to data can undermine both the public safety and trade facilitation objectives.

> 13 The latter question is beyond our specific competencies, but we hope that our evidence is useful in informing others more qualified to make those judgements.  We note that in the products studied here, agencies like the FVA play an important “monitoring” role to assure the public that food and animal health products are safe.  High rates of compliance should be observed in these products because private operators have strong private incentives to ensure the safety of their products (i.e., brand value and legal liability). Acknowledging these issues as they relate specifically to food safety, one might still expect the frequency of laboratory testing to be linked to probabilities of non-compliance, especially when controlling for the type of product, which should capture most of the variation across shipments in the expected harm associated with the release of a non-compliant shipment onto the market.

> 14 For example, the U.S. Food and Drug administration has a multi-dimensional strategy for oversight of imported seafood, available at https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/ImportsExports/Importing/ucm248706.htm. This strategy is notable for its use

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