Economics Of Food Safety

This book examines the economic incentives for food safety in the private marketplace and how public actions have helped shape those incentives. Noted contributors analyze alternative public health protection efforts and the benefits and costs associated with these actions to understand: why an excess of foodborne illness occurs what policies have worked best how regulations have evolved what the path forward to better control of pathogens in the U.S. and the international food supply chain might look like While the first third of the book builds an economic framework, the remaining chapters apply economics to specific food safety issues. Numerous chapters explore economic decision making within individual companies, revealing the trade-offs of the costs of food safety systems to comply with regulations vs. non-compliance which carries costs of possible penalties, reputation damage, legal liability suits, and sales reduction. Pathogen control costs are examined in both the short run and long run. The book's unique application of economic theory to food safety decision making in both the public and private sectors makes it a key resource for food safety professionals in academia, government, industry, and consumer groups around the world. In addition to Benefit/Cost Analysis and economic incentives, other economic concepts are applied to food safety supply chains, such as, principal-agent theory and the economics of information. Authors provide real world examples, from Farm-to-Fork, to showcase these economic concepts throughout the book.

Public concern about the safety and healthfulness of the food supply grew markedly during the 1980s. Numerous government, academic, interest group, and media reports questioning the adequacy of the food safety regulatory system formed the basis for this increase in concern. While public concern focused most directly on pesticide residues in food, scientists emphasized the risks of illness associated with microbiological contamination of food. Much additional attention was focused on the food supply as a result of the striking consensus on dietary recommendations that emerged in the late 1980s based on increased scientific knowledge of linkages between diet and health. Relatively little research on the economic aspects of food safety and nutrition issues had been conducted up to the mid-1980s. These aspects are complex. On the consumer demand side, they include consumers' perceptions of the risks associated with particular food products, how demographic characteristics influence consumers' processing of risk information and subsequent changes in food demand behavior, and the monetary value consumers might place on changes in the risk profiles of products. The economic benefits and costs associated with current food consumption patterns are a major determinant of demand for improved food safety and dietary change through government regulation. While a more complete picture of risks, benefits, and costs has been emerging recently, much is yet unknown.

The primary focus of the workshop was on food-safety economics for animal products.

This book analyses EU food law from a regulatory, economic and managerial perspective. It presents an economic assessment of strategies of food safety regulation, and discusses the different regulatory regimes in EU food law. It examines the challenges of food safety in the internal market as well as the regulatory tools that are available. The book’s generic theorising and measurement of regulatory effects is supplemented by detailed analysis of key topics in food markets, such as health claims, enforcement strategies, and induced risk management at the level of the organizations producing food. The regulatory effects discussed in the book range from classical regulatory analysis covering e.g. effects of ex-ante versus ex-post regulation and content-related versus information-related regulation to new regulatory options such as behavioral regulation. The book takes as its premise the idea that economic considerations are basic to the design and functioning of the European food supply arena, and that economic effects consolidate or induce modification of the present legal structures and principles. The assessments, analyses and examination of the various issues presented in the book serve to answer the question of how economic theory and practice can explain and enhance the shaping and modification of the regulatory framework that fosters safe and sustainable food supply chains. ​ ​

Public concern about the safety and healthfulness of the food supply grew markedly during the 1980s. Numerous government, academic, interest group, and media reports questioning the adequacy of the food safety regulatory system formed the basis for this increase in concern. While public concern focused most directly on pesticide residues in food, scientists emphasized the risks of illness associated with microbiological contamination of food. Much additional attention was focused on the food supply as a result of the striking consensus on dietary recommendations that emerged in the late 1980s based on increased scientific knowledge of linkages between diet and health. Relatively little research on the economic aspects of food safety and nutrition issues had been conducted up to the mid-1980s. These aspects are complex. On the consumer demand side, they include consumers' perceptions of the risks associated with particular food products, how demographic characteristics influence consumers' processing of risk information and subsequent changes in food demand behavior, and the monetary value consumers might place on changes in the risk profiles of products. The economic benefits and costs associated with current food consumption patterns are a major determinant of demand for improved food safety and dietary change through government regulation. While a more complete picture of risks, benefits, and costs has been emerging recently, much is yet unknown.

This report strengthens the economic case for increased public investment and more robust policy attention to food safety in low and middle income countries and provides guidance on ways to achieve significant, broad-based impact from such actions.

Food safety regulators face a daunting task: crafting food safety performance standards and systems that continue in the tradition of using the best available science to protect the health of the American public, while working within an increasingly antiquated and fragmented regulatory framework. Current food safety standards have been set over a period of years and under diverse circumstances, based on a host of scientific, legal, and practical constraints. Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food lays the groundwork for creating new regulations that are consistent, reliable, and ensure the best protection for the health of American consumers. This book addresses the biggest concerns in food safetyâ€"including microbial disease surveillance plans, tools for establishing food safety criteria, and issues specific to meat, dairy, poultry, seafood, and produce. It provides a candid analysis of the problems with the current system, and outlines the major components of the task at hand: creating workable, streamlined food safety standards and practices.

This technical summary prepared by FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO) reports on the two international food safety conferences held in Addis Ababa and Geneva in February and April 2019. It recalls the key actions and strategies presented to address current and future challenges to food safety globally and the steps required to strengthen commitment at the highest political level to scale up food safety in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At a pivotal moment focussing international attention on actions needed to bolster food safety, this publication recalls the priorities discussed so that food safety strategies and approaches can be aligned across sectors and borders, reinforcing efforts to reach the Sustainable Development Goals and supporting the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition.