Effects of Food Safety Information on Meat Demand: A Comparison of the United States and Canada

In addition to the traditional economic factors such as income level and prices, food safety has a potentially significant impact on consumers' meat preferences. Therefore, understanding the consumers' responses to food safety information is important to policy analysts and the meat industry. As the U.S. and Canada have both experienced cases of BSE, it is useful to compare U.S. and Canadian consumer responses to food safety events to better understand factors that influence consumer response. The objective of this study is to compare both own- and cross-commodity impacts of publicized food safety information on U.S. and Canadian meat demand by setting up individual food safety indices for each meat product including beef, pork, and poultry using monthly data. This study provides valuable information about the consumer responses to food safety events in both the U.S. and Canada. Its new contribution is through use of recent and monthly data, construction of unique food safety indices and the ability to compare consumer responses in the two countries.