The food scandals and foodborne disease outbreaks in recent years have increased the demand
for food safety and have led policy makers once more to tighten the safety regulations in the food
supply chain. Obviously, an adequate balance between the costs of foodborne diseases and the
costs and benefits of improved food safety is not static but time-varying and depends very much on
specific situations. Given the complexity of an economic assessment of food safety, it is not
surprising that the literature in this field mainly analyses particular stages but not the complete
food supply chain from the farm to the consumer. This paper focuses on the costs of foodborne
diseases and aims to review and classify the existing literature along a set of certain evaluation
criteria. Our main findings are that most studies so far have been conducted in the USA and the
UK. The reviewed studies consider mainly the consumption level of the supply chain, focus
on tangible costs, examine budgetary costs and costs of individuals, and make use of the cost-of-illness approach