FOOD SAFETY AND FRESH STRAWBERRY MARKETS

Consumer awareness of food safety issues is reshaping the retail food supply chain. For some retailers, public standards for food safety fail to provide the level of assurance demanded by their customers, so many are turning to private standards. Fresh strawberries have been implicated in food safety outbreaks resulting in clear decreases in short term demand. Shifts in production and consumption caused by the increased costs of adopting public or private food safety standards may reshape the fresh strawberry industry in the NAFTA region. Three scenarios of the adoption of food safety practices are analyzed using comparative statics and the outcomes of each scenario are discussed.