This paper examines the impact of food safety standards imposed on suppliers of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program by the Agricultural Marketing Service. Probit regression results show that plants approved by AMS that bid on contracts to supply the NSLP had a higher level of food...

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...

Food safety technology can increase a company’s capacity to prevent a foodborne contamination. A food safety audit—a quality control tool in which an auditor observes whether a plant’s processing practices and technologies are compatible with good food safety practices—can indicate how...

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...

Recent industry innovations improving the safety of the Nation's meat supply range from new pathogen tests, high-tech equipment, and supply chain management systems, to new surveillance networks. Despite these and other improvements, the market incentives that motivate private firms to invest in...