heasman 1998 on the one hand. regulation is a major element of the environment in which firms operate and can constrain the strategic behaviour of firms,particularly in heavily regulated sectors and/or sextors subject to frequent regulatory change (porter,1980; porter and van der linde,1995). the food industry is one example of this. on the other hand,capture theory suggests that firms may attempt to co-opt the regulatory process in an attempt to gain strategic advantage (stigler,1971;pelz-man,1976) this can occur at the level of the individual firm of the industry through for example; interest groups.