Recently enacted food safety regulations require processors to meet product standards for microbial contamination in meat products. An analysis of the cost-effectiveness of several technological interventions for microbial control in beef and pork processing shows that marginal improvements in...

Microbial pathogens and pesticide residues in food pose a financial burden to society which can be reduced by incurring costs to reduce these food safety risks. We explore three valuation techniques that place a monetary value on food safety risk reductions, and we present a case study for each:...

Remarkable changes have occurred over the years in the domestic and international economic environment of the fruit and vegetable industry. These changes are partly driven by the North American Free Trade Agreement, nutrition policies, and development and enforcement of new food safety...

This study demonstrates how contingent valuation techniques can be used in a cost-benefit analysis of a food safety policy issue. The analysis focuses on banning a specific post harvest pesticide used in fresh grapefruit packinghouses. Benefits of the ban are measured using consumers' aggregated...

Pesticide use is regulated within a complex legal framework that includes the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; and other environmental laws. The framework includes risk-benefit rules for some decisions that permit full consideration...

Attitudes of Japanese consumers toward domestic and foreign varieties of rice were analyzed on the basis of a survey. We found that the current retail prices for imported rice are higher than the average consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP), whereas most domestic rice was priced below the...

The effect of negative publicity on consumer demand for brands is examined in the context of recall of a peanut butter brand as a result of pathogen contamination. The recall was asso- ciated with negative impacts for the implicated brand and positive effects on the leading competitor brand....

The opportunities and challenges of incorporating accurate policy representations into institutional partial equilibrium commodity models were investigated. Six issues are raised: commodity space definition, vertical linkages, assessing market power, the changing nature of government support,...

Initial ideas on risk management uses of precision agricultural technology focused on site-specific treatment of problem areas to reduce the probability of low yields and returns. Recent discussions deal with sensor and remote-sensing information to improve marketing and "as applied maps" as...