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AbstractThis article reviews the empirical economics literature on food safety, reputation, and regulation. Producers have strong private incentives to provide safe food, largely related to reputation, especially the negative demand effects seen in response to food‐safety problems. Mandatory disclosure of information about food safety can change demand and improve safety outcomes. Private incentives led producers and marketers to adopt private and collective standards for produce safety prior to the implementation of similar government regulations in the United States. Private and collective standards and government regulations all have distributional effects. The article concludes with some policy suggestions informed by the literature.

List of online resources from federal and state government entities for help dealing with COVID-19 ; NP

Beginning in 2003, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) put forth a series of Federal Register announcements regarding the public disclosure of results of tests for Salmonella in chicken carcasses. In particular, FSIS suggested in 2003 that it might disclose the identities of any slaughter or ground meat plant failing its Salmonella tests if test performance did not improve, and in 2004 the service increased regulatory scrutiny of plants not meeting FSIS Salmonella standards. In 2006, FSIS introduced a more easily-understood measure of food-safety quality and indicated that public disclosure would be forthcoming if results of tests for Salmonella did not improve; FSIS targeted the chicken-slaughter industry with a high degree of specificity. In 2008, FSIS began reporting the names of chicken-slaughter plants with poor performance on tests for Salmonella in chicken carcasses. This article examines the effects of these regulatory actions on Salmonella test outcomes. We find that (1) announcements in 2003 and 2004 were associated with improved performance by the poorest-performing chicken-slaughter plants; (2) the introduction of an easily-understood measure of food-safety quality and the threat of disclosure of the identities of poorly performing plants in 2006 were associated with improved performance by all chicken-slaughter plants; and (3) implementation of a public disclosure program in 2008 was associated with improvements among better-performing chicken-slaughter plants. ; USDA, Economic Research ServiceUnited States Department of Agriculture (USDA) ; The authors received helpful comments from the editor Tim Richards, three anonymous reviewers, seminar participants at the University of California at Davis and the University of Connecticut, and colleagues at the USDA Economic Research Service. James Wilkus of the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service provided the data that was analyzed. The findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. government determination or policy. The research was supported by the USDA, Economic Research Service. ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee

AbstractThe Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) substantially expands the authority of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate fresh produce marketed in the United States. This article uses an equilibrium‐displacement framework incorporating stochastic food‐borne illness outbreaks to simulate long‐run market effects of FSMA using the North American fresh‐tomato industry as a case study. We demonstrate how, under FSMA, certain categories of suppliers will gain advantage over others. Growers and suppliers within the United States, and their buyers, are likely to gain relative to foreign producers and importers because FSMA imposes specific requirements for importers. Among fully regulated growers, large growers will benefit relative to small growers. Many producers have already adopted food‐safety standards that closely resemble the FSMA rules, and the cost of implementing the FSMA requirements for these producers will be much lower than for other producers.

AbstractDeclining survey response rates have driven many researchers to seek out cost‐effective methods of increasing participation, such as conducting surveys online, paying incentives, and using social media to engage hard‐to‐reach populations. Malicious actors can exploit the monetary incentives and anonymity of online surveys, threatening the integrity of survey data. We share two recent experiences conducting online surveys that were inundated with fraudulent responses. Our objective is to increase awareness of this emerging issue and offer guidance for others to mitigate the effects of fraudulent responders in their own research.