The emergence and importance of private standards in contemporary regulatory governance have been the subject of extensive debate. Recent studies have attempted to explore several dimensions of private regulation, such as its growth or effectiveness. By contrast, this article focuses on the regulatory diffusion of private standards. There has been a broad range of literature on diffusion and reception of norms—for instance, the scholarship of legal transplants or law's migration addressed how international treaties or foreign national laws were received in States. However, norm exportation and importation does not only occur between States; this article focuses on regulatory diffusion between private actors. To do so, it examines the case of GLOBALG.A.P., a private food safety scheme started in Europe that has influenced private standard initiatives beyond Europe. This article concludes by emphasizing that successful regulatory diffusion requires taking local contexts into account and preserving diversity.
