The impact of food safety standards on international trade has already been addressed.Generally, economists try to assess trade losses borne by exporters when importing countries imposestricter regulations. In this paper we assess the impact of the Maximum Residue Levels (MRL) ofpesticides on the trade of apples and pears. Rather than focusing on a particular pesticide we take intoaccount the entire list of substances set out by the various regulations with the aim is to understand howthe similarity (or dissimilarity) of these can affect trade. Most studies assess the impact of sanitarystandard regulations introducing directly in the analysis the MLR put in force in the importing country.We assume that what can be crucial is the difference in the tolerance levels of both the importing andexporting country. Having built a similarity index we then introduce it into a gravity equation to assess theimpact of differences in MRL of pesticides on the trade of apples and pears of seven exporting and sevenimporting countries. Results suggest that harmonizing regulations impacts trade differently depending on the exporter.