MEAT TRACEABILITY: ARE U.S. CONSUMERS WILLING TO PAY FOR IT?

This article reports the results form a series of laboratory auction markets in which consumers bid on meat characteristics. The characteristics examined include meat traceability (i.e., the ability to tract the retail meat back to the farm or animal of hormones, or knowing the animal was humanely treated), and extra assurances (e.g., extra meat safety assurances). This laboratory study provides non-hypothetical bid data on consumer preferences for a sample of consumers in Logan, Utah, for traceability, transparency, and assurances (TTA) in red meat at a time when the United States currently lags other countries in development of TTA meat systems. Results suggest these consumers would be willing to pay for such TTA meat characteristics, and the magnitude of the consumer bids reveals that a profitable market for development of TTA systems in the United States might exist.Consumer/Household Economics,

Transparency in the Pork Supply Chain: Comparing China and The Netherlands

We present a research plan to assess the value of transparency by comparing pork supply chains in The Netherlands and China.We assume that chain performance depends on chain configuration, which depends on societal context and its associated quality control institutions. We define chain configuration in terms of structure and transparency. In order to be able to assess the influence of societal context and its quality control institutions on chain configuration and performance, we compare two countries that have very different societies. Ultimately, our goal is to be able to indicate whether a certain chain configuration suits all, or whether chain configuration should be tailored to societal context.Pork supply chain, societal context, transparency, information exchange, chain configuration, Agribusiness, Industrial Organization,

Willingness to Pay for Traceable Meat Attributes: A Meta-analysis

Several researches evaluated consumers’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) for each meat traceable attribute, generating a great deal of information in this regard, although specific to the conditions of each study. In light of this, WTP estimates for traceability characteristics differ across the literature, leading sometimes to contrasting interpretations. Seeking a full, meaningful statistical description of the findings of a collection of studies, the meta-analysis allows us to analyze consistency across studies and control for factors thought to drive variations in WTP estimates. The meta-analysis has been conducted using 23 studies that, in aggregate, report 88 valuations for WTP. Our results, aside from releasing unconditional information on the WTP for single meat traceable attributes, show how certain study-specific characteristics, like the base price and the country where the study has been conducted, have a significant impact on WTP estimatesMeta-analysis, food traceability, Willingness to Pay, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Production Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Risk and Uncertainty,

MEAT TRACEABILITY: ARE U. S. CONSUMERS WILLING TO PAY FOR IT?

This article reports the results from a series of laboratory auction markets in which consumers bid on meat characteristics. The characteristics examined include meat traceability (i.e., the ability to trace the retail meat back to the farm or animal or origin), transparency (e.g., knowing that the meat was produced without growth hormones, or knowing the animal was humanely treated), and extra assurances (e.g., extra meat safety assurances). This laboratory study provides non-hypothetical bid data on U. S. consumer preferences for traceability, transparency, and assurances (TTA) in red meat at a time when the U.S. currently lags other countries in development of TTA meat systems. Our results suggest that U.S. consumers would be willing to pay for such TTA meat characteristics, and the magnitude of the consumer bids suggest a likely profitable market for development of U.S. TTA systems.Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Modeling Heterogeneity in Consumer Preferences for Select Food Safety Attributes in China

Food safety issues often arise from problems of asymmetric information between consumers and suppliers with regards to product-specific attributes. Severe food safety scandals were observed recently in China that not only caused direct economic and life loss but also created distrust in the Chinese food system domestically as well as internationally. While much attention has focused on the problems plaguing the Chinese government’s food inspection system, little research has been dedicated to analyze consumers’ concerns over food safety. In this paper we measure consumer preferences for select food safety attributes in pork and take their food safety risk perceptions into account. Several choice experiment models, including latent class and random parameters logit, are constructed to capture heterogeneity in consumer preferences. A statistical sample of 6,720 observations is obtained from a choice experiment administered in seven major Chinese metropolitan cities. Our results suggest that Chinese consumers have the highest willingness-to-pay for a government certification program, followed by a traceability system, third party certification and a product-specific information label. The results of this study call upon the direct involvement of the Chinese government in the food safety system. A more strict monitoring system will not only improve consumer welfare in the short-run but also restore consumers’ trust leading to a social welfare increase in the long run.Food safety, choice experiment, willingness-to-pay, risk perceptions, random parameters logit, latent class logit, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Q13, Q17, Q18,

The Relationship between Supply Chain Coordination and Quality Assurance Systems: A Case Study Approach on the German Meat Sector

The German meat industry faces a high demand for food safety and traceability. After several meat scandals in the recent past, efforts have to be made to regain consumer trust and to assure access to export markets. Apart from a few niche markets, there is no focal company in the German pork supply chain which efficiently coordinates food chain information, harmonizes the multiplicity of different IT systems or takes on professional public relations in charge of the whole sector. In cases of food crises, essential up- and downstream information slowly flows across the supply chain which hinders both seamless traceability and the harmonization of production processes between the various stages of the supply chain. This contribution focuses on the opportunities for more efficient coordination based on spot market environments. With reference to the theory of organization economics, a case study of the QS Qualität und Sicherheit GmbH as the leading certification scheme that addresses the German meat industry was carried out. Several non-classical certification activities which fall within the scope of coordination were identified with QS. Based on the assumption that the company continuously improves the coordination of the supply chain, there are opportunities for the meat sector as a whole which are pointed out in the conclusion.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

STRUCTURAL CHANGE OR LOGICAL INCREMENTALISM? TURBULENCE IN THE GLOBAL MEAT SYSTEM

In the last ten years the global meat industry has encountered numerous critical events related to food safety and food quality. These events in turn have caused the industry to re-evaluate how the meat supply chain functions and how to service the new social attributes demanded in the market place. Issues like source-verified, non-GMO, and organic are becoming important sources of product differentiation. How should firms in the meat supply chain respond? This study uses a needs assessment approach with meat supply chain managers and direct cataloguing of retail meat cases to better understand how the US meat supply chain is reacting to the turbulence in the industry.Livestock Production/Industries,

Do Inspection and Traceability Provide Incentives for Food Safety?

One of the goals of inspection and traceability is to motivate suppliers to deliver safer food. The ability of these policies to motivate suppliers depends on the accuracy of the inspection, the cost of failing inspection, the cost of causing a foodborne illness, and the proportion of these costs paid by the supplier. We develop a model of the supplier's expected cost as a function of inspection accuracy, the cost of failure, and the proportion of the failure cost that is allocated to suppliers. The model is used to identify the conditions under which the supplier is motivated to deliver uncontaminated lots. Surprisingly, our results show that when safety failure costs can be allocated to suppliers, minimum levels of inspection error are required to motivate a supplier to deliver uncontaminated lots. This result does not hold when costs cannot be allocated to suppliers. As a case study, we use our results to analyze the technical requirements for suppliers of frozen beef to the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.diagnostic error, food safety, inspection, sampling error, traceability, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,