diff --git a/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/Hive/Utils.pm b/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/Hive/Utils.pm
index b6ad62e275ddb6c8004dc9a5834596251cc3d535..e42277faed5ecb814691c7904fd855be2836335f 100644
--- a/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/Hive/Utils.pm
+++ b/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/Hive/Utils.pm
@@ -59,11 +59,12 @@ our @EXPORT_OK = qw( stringify destringify dir_revhash parse_cmdline_options fin
 sub stringify {
     my $structure = pop @_;
 
-    local $Data::Dumper::Indent    = 0;  # we want everything on one line
-    local $Data::Dumper::Terse     = 1;  # and we want it without dummy variable names
-    local $Data::Dumper::Sortkeys  = 1;  # make stringification more deterministic
-    local $Data::Dumper::Quotekeys = 1;  # conserve some space
-    local $Data::Dumper::Useqq     = 1;  # escape the \n and \t correctly
+    local $Data::Dumper::Indent    = 0;         # we want everything on one line
+    local $Data::Dumper::Terse     = 1;         # and we want it without dummy variable names
+    local $Data::Dumper::Sortkeys  = 1;         # make stringification more deterministic
+    local $Data::Dumper::Quotekeys = 1;         # conserve some space
+    local $Data::Dumper::Useqq     = 1;         # escape the \n and \t correctly
+    local $Data::Dumper::Pair      = ' => ';    # make sure we always produce Perl-parsable structures, no matter what is set externally
 
     return Dumper($structure);
 }