USDA is now requiring all Federally inspected meat and poultry processing and slaughter plants to implement a new system called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) to reduce potentially harmful microbial pathogens in the food supply. This report finds that the benefits of the new...

Nutrients from livestock and poultry manure are key sources of water pollution. Ever-growing numbers of animals per farm and per acre have increased the risk of water pollution. New Clean Water Act regulations compel the largest confined animal producers to meet nutrient application standards...

Meatpacking consolidated rapidly in the last two decades: slaughter plants became much larger, and concentration increased as smaller firms left the industry. We use establishment-based data from the U.S. Census Bureau to describe consolidation and to identify the roles of scale economies and...

This study addresses changes in the organization of the U.S. pork industry, most notably marketing contracts between packers and producers, by exploring their function in addressing pork quality concerns. A number of developments brought quality concerns to the forefront. These include health...

The economic development of South Korea is often considered a model for developing countries. We use 1975 and 1990 data in a general equilibrium framework with a highly disaggregated sector specification to evaluate the opportunity cost of its agricultural protection. We show that although...

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) finances about 13.5 percent of its budget outlays through user fees for overtime and unscheduled meat and poultry inspections. User fees play an increasingly important role in financing government programs, and FSIS has frequently requested...

Cost function analyses using data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census reveal substantial scale economies in chicken and turkey slaughter. These economies show no evidence of diminishing as plant size increases, are much greater than those realized in cattle and hog slaughter, and have resulted in...

Sanitation and process control costs increased the costs of producing meat and poultry by about 0.5 percent in the period preceding the promulgation of the Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (PR/HACCP) rule of 1996. However, there was no benefit in trying to avoid...

The level and distribution of the costs and benefits of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) regulatory program for meat and poultry change dramatically once economywide effects are included in the analysis. Using a Social Accounting Matrix Model, we find that reduced premature...

This report examines the restructuring of the livestock sectors in five countries: Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. All five countries experienced a decline in both animal inventories and meat output during the early years of transition away from a centrally planned economy. ERS,...