IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea15/205870.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Business of Safe Food: An Assessment of the Global Food Safety Certification Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Boys, Kathryn A.
  • Caswell, Julie A.
  • Hoffmann, Sandra A.
  • Colarusso, Samantha

Abstract

Business and consumer demand for private, third-party, and public systems that audit and certify food safety is growing both domestically and internationally. As it has been proposed that third-party certification systems be used to help assure the safety of imported food products governed by FSMA, demand for these standards is likely to further increase. It is unknown, however, to what extent the food safety certification industry has the capacity to accommodate this expanding demand. This is particularly true of regions where third-party firms which provide audits to food safety standards (certification bodies), do not have a large presence. This study offers a first, in-depth, and comprehensive effort at assessing the industrial organization of global food safety certification industry. Using a unique dataset developed for this study, we inventory the food safety certification industry and the firms that certify individual farms, food processors, and food manufacturers to a broad range of national and international food safety standards. An assessment of the geographic distribution of certification bodies is then undertaken to identify areas in potential need of additional food safety certification capacity. Implications of these findings are considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Boys, Kathryn A. & Caswell, Julie A. & Hoffmann, Sandra A. & Colarusso, Samantha, 2015. "The Business of Safe Food: An Assessment of the Global Food Safety Certification Industry," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205870, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea15:205870
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.205870
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/205870/files/Overview%20of%20the%20Food%20Certification%20Industry%20-%20Selected%20Paper.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.205870?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stéphan Marette & John Crespi, 2003. "Can Quality Certification Lead to Stable Cartels?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 23(1), pages 43-64, August.
    2. Sven Anders & Diogo Souza-Monteiro & Elodie Rouviere, 2010. "Competition and Credibility of Private Third-party Certification in International Food Supply," Post-Print hal-01323238, HAL.
    3. Gabriele Jahn & Matthias Schramm & Achim Spiller, 2005. "The Reliability of Certification: Quality Labels as a Consumer Policy Tool," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 53-73, December.
    4. Anders, Sven M. & Souza Monteiro, Diogo M. & Rouviere, Elodie, 2007. "Objectiveness in the Market for Third-Party Certification: Does market structure matter?," 105th Seminar, March 8-10, 2007, Bologna, Italy 7894, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Froese, Rainer & Proelss, Alexander, 2012. "Evaluation and legal assessment of certified seafood," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1284-1289.
    6. Ollinger, Michael & Muth, Mary K. & Karns, Shawn A. & Choice, Zanethia, 2011. "Food Safety Audits, Plant Characteristics, and Food Safety Technology Use in Meat and Poultry Plants," Economic Information Bulletin 117989, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    7. John M. Crespi & St)phan Marette, 2001. "How Should Food Safety Certification be Financed?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(4), pages 852-861.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Calvin, Linda & Jensen, Helen & Klonsky, Karen & Cook, Roberta, 2017. "Food Safety Practices and Costs Under the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement," Economic Information Bulletin 259719, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    2. Caswell, Julie A. & Boys, Kathryn A. & Danilow, Alyssa A. & Lynch, Kathryn E., 2017. "Food Certification Industry Capacity and Ability to Comply with FSMA Final Rule on Accredited Third-Party Certification," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258468, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Langinier Corinne & Babcock Bruce A., 2008. "Agricultural Production Clubs: Viability and Welfare Implications," Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-31, December.
    2. Cuffaro, Nadia & Di Giacinto, Marina, 2015. "Credence goods, consumers’ trust in regulation and high quality exports," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 4(2), pages 1-19, August.
    3. Marette Stéphan & Roosen Jutta & Blanchemanche Sandrine, 2011. "The Combination of Lab and Field Experiments for Benefit-Cost Analysis," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 2(3), pages 1-36, August.
    4. Chloé Tankam & Dominique Vollet & Olivier Aznar, 2019. "Between information asymmetry and shared uncertainty, an analysis of organic certification systems for the Kenyan domestic market [Entre asymétrie d'information et incertitude partagée analyse des ," Post-Print hal-02534461, HAL.
    5. Nathalie Meißner & Etti Winter, 2019. "Design principles for protected area certificates: a case study on strategic investor groups," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 303-329, February.
    6. Auriol, Emmanuelle & Schilizzi, Steven G.M., 2015. "Quality signaling through certification in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 105-121.
    7. Talia Bar & Yuqing Zheng, 2016. "Leniency and Loyalty in the Choice of Certifiers: Evidence from the BRC Food Safety Standard," Working papers 2016-22, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    8. Bar, Talia & Zheng, Yuqing, 2015. "Strategic Selection of Certifiers: Evidence from the BRC Food Safety Standard," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205570, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    9. Ivanova, Daniela, 2018. "Сертификацията – Инструмент За „Зелени“ Комуникации В Глобалната Търговия [Certification - a tool for “green” communications in global trade]," MPRA Paper 96038, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Padilla Bravo, Carlos Antonio & Spiller, Achim & Villalobos, Pablo, 2012. "Are Organic Growers Satisfied with the Certification System? A Causal Analysis of Farmers’ Perceptions in Chile," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 15(4), pages 1-22, November.
    11. Venus, Thomas J. & Drabik, Dusan & Wesseler, Justus, 2018. "The role of a German multi-stakeholder standard for livestock products derived from non-GMO feed," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 58-67.
    12. Zheng, Yuqing & Bar, Talia, 2017. "Audit Grades in Food Safety Certification," 2017 Annual Meeting, February 4-7, 2017, Mobile, Alabama 252714, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    13. Swagato Chatterjee, 2020. "Signalling Service Quality through Price and Certifications," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 21(1), pages 279-293, February.
    14. Friederike Albersmeier & Holger Schulze & Achim Spiller, 2009. "Evaluation and reliability of the organic certification system: perceptions by farmers in Latin America," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(5), pages 311-324.
    15. Langinier, Corinne & Babcock, Bruce A., 2005. "Producer's choice of certification," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19510, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    16. Marion Desquilbet & Sylvette Monier-Dilhan, 2015. "Are geographical indications a worthy quality label? A framework with endogenous quality choice," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 42(1), pages 129-150.
    17. Xujin Pu & Huanzhen Zhang, 2016. "Voluntary Certification of Agricultural Products in Competitive Markets: The Consideration of Boundedly Rational Consumers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-13, September.
    18. Chengyan Yue & Stéphan Marette & John C. Beghin, 2006. "How to Promote Quality Perception in Wine Markets: Brand Advertising or Geographical Indication?," Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) Publications (archive only) 06-wp426, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    19. Samia Ayyub & Xuhui Wang & Muhammad Asif & Rana Muhammad Ayyub, 2018. "Antecedents of Trust in Organic Foods: The Mediating Role of Food Related Personality Traits," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-17, October.
    20. William A. Masters & Diakalia Sanogo, 2002. "Welfare Gains from Quality Certification of Infant Foods: Results from a Market Experiment in Mali," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(4), pages 974-989.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Industrial Organization; International Relations/Trade;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea15:205870. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.