Analysis of the Economic Effects of Requiring Post-harvest Processing for Raw Oysters

oysters, post-harvest processing, hydrostatic pressure, cool pasteurization, GIS, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, L510, Q180, Q220,

Food Safety Audits, Plant Characteristics, and Food Safety Technology Use in Meat and Poultry Plants

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 effectively food safety technology is being used. Fast food restaurants, grocery stores, and other major customers of meat and poultry processing plants conduct their own audits or hire auditors to assess the soundness of a plant’s processing operation. Meat and poultry plants can also audit themselves as a way to help maintain process control. In this report, we document the extent of food safety audits in meat and poultry processing plants. We also examine the associations between the use of audits and plant size, firm structure, and food safety technology use. Results show that larger plants, plants subject to food safety audits, and plants that are part of a multiplant firm use more food safety technology than other plants. Plants subject to both plant-hired and customer-hired audits had greater technology use than single (plant- or customer-hired) audit plants.Meat and poultry processing, safety standards, product recalls, food safety technology, food safety audits, Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

EXIT OF MEAT SLAUGHTER PLANTS DURING IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PR/HACCP REGULATIONS

Implementation of the Pathogen Reduction and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (PR/HACCP) regulations has occurred across all U.S. meat and poultry plants. A probit model is estimated to determine which factors have affected the probability of red meat slaughter plant exit during implementation of the regulations. While controlling for plant-level, company-level, regional-level, and supply conditions that may affect the probability of plant exit, smaller plants are found to exhibit a much greater probability of exit than larger plants. Other factors affecting plant exit include plant age, market share relative to the degree of market concentration, regional entry rates, and state-level wage rates.Agribusiness,

PLANT ENTRY AND EXIT FROM THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY DURING PATHOGEN REDUCTION AND HACCP IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation of the Pathogen Reduction and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (PR/HACCP) regulations has now occurred across all U.S. meat and poultry plants. Using databases of plants under federal inspection, we estimate a probit model to determine which factors have affected the probability of exit of meat slaughtering plants during implementation of the regulations.Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Price, Nutrition, Time, and Other Trade-Offs: A Web-Based Food Value Analysis Application to Compare Foods at Different Levels of Preparation and Processing

Consumers choose to eat different forms of foods based on a wide variety of factors such as price, taste, nutrition, and convenience and, in doing so, make trade-offs among them. A Web-based application for use by nutrition educators was developed to help individuals compare foods prepared from home recipes with those for other forms of food (eg, frozen, canned, dry mix). Foods with a home-recipe form in US Department of Agriculture databases were selected to represent a range of commonly consumed entrées, baked goods, side dishes, fruits, vegetables, desserts, and beverages. Multiple US Department of Agriculture and commercial databases along with other public data sources were used to construct prices, nutrient values, food groups and components, preparation and cooking times, shelf life, and food safety concerns for foods in the database. Per-serving and per-100-g values were constructed for 100 individual foods with a home recipe and 1 or more other forms. The data are available in a Web-based application, located at http://www.foodvalueanalysis.org, allowing comparisons of individual foods or a daily diet constructed from foods in the database. Nutrition educators can use the application to advise individuals in selecting foods to consume to meet dietary guidelines while taking into consideration cost, preparation time, food preparation skills, and individual preferences. For example, the application can be used to evaluate differences in prices of fresh or processed foods, whether home recipe or processed foods are less costly when taking into consideration the value of preparation time, and the differences in nutrients across different forms of foods

Do Obese and Nonobese Consumers Respond Differently to Price Changes? Implications of Preference Heterogeneity for Using Food Taxes and Subsidies to Reduce Obesity

Preference heterogeneity in food demand has important health and equity implications for targeted taxes and subsidies intended to enhance diet quality and reduce obesity. We study the role of obesity in the purchases of food at home and food away from home using data from the nationally representative National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey. We develop a method for incorporating the complex survey design and retail scanner data into the estimation of a 21-good Exact Affine Stone Index demand system with endogenous prices and truncated purchases. We find significant preference heterogeneity associated with the obesity status of household members. Counterfactual simulations find that 1) a sweetened beverage tax is effective in increasing the healthfulness of grocery purchases by lower-income obese consumers; 2) the nutritional benefits of a fruit and vegetable subsidy are concentrated on nonobese consumers with little improvement in obese consumers’ Healthy Eating Index and an increase in their total calories purchased; and 3) a fiscally neutral healthy food subsidy fully funded by an unhealthy food tax benefits nonobese consumers both financially and nutritionally more than it does obese consumers. These findings show that lowering healthy food prices without raising the cost of unhealthy foods is unlikely to reduce obesity. Policymakers in favor of a systems approach of simultaneously taxing unhealthy foods and subsidizing healthy foods should be mindful of the distributional effects of this policy on obese consumers and the lower-income population

Food Safety Audits, Plant Characteristics, and Food Safety Technology Use in Meat and Poultry Plants

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 effectively food safety technology is being used. Fast food restaurants, grocery stores, and other major customers of meat and poultry processing plants conduct their own audits or hire auditors to assess the soundness of a plant’s processing operation. Meat and poultry plants can also audit themselves as a way to help maintain process control. In this report, we document the extent of food safety audits in meat and poultry processing plants. We also examine the associations between the use of audits and plant size, firm structure, and food safety technology use. Results show that larger plants, plants subject to food safety audits, and plants that are part of a multiplant firm use more food safety technology than other plants. Plants subject to both plant-hired and customer-hired audits had greater technology use than single (plant- or customer-hired) audit plants

Habit Formation and Demand for Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Using scanner data, we estimated demand for nine nonalcoholic beverages under habit formation. We found strong evidence for habit formation. Although demand for sugar-sweetened beverages by low-income households is less elastic to own-price changes compared with high-income households, there is evidence that high-income households consider beverages to be more substitutable than low-income households do. A half-cent per ounce tax on store-purchased sugar-sweetened beverages will result in a moderate reduction in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages for both income strata. Because of habit formation, long-run national tax revenue from a sugar-sweetened beverage tax is about 15 to 20% lower than short-run revenue. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.