HACCP as a Regulatory Innovation to Improve Food Safety in the Meat Industry

Industrial engineers in the food-processing industry have developed the Halyard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system as a preventive approach to ensuring the safety of meat and poultry products. This paper discusses both the origins of HACCP as an engineering concept and the economics of HACCP as a regulatory tool. The authors contend that the economics literature has not adequately explored the benefits from prevention, particularly when the costs of hazard detection are high and the exact benefits of a particular standard are uncertain but potentially large. Disciplines Agricultural and Resource Economics | Agricultural Economics | Economics | Industrial Engineering This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/card_workingpapers/201 HACCP as a Regulatory Innovation to Improve Food Safety in the Meat Industry Laurian J. Unnevehr :md Helen H. Jensen Working Paper 96-WP 152 February 1996 HACCP as a Regulatory Innovation to Improve Food Safety in the Meat Industry Laurian J. Unnevehr and Helen II. Jensen Working Paper 96-WP 152 February 1996 Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Iowa State University Ames, IA 50011 Laurian 1. Unnevehr is an associate professor, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, Universitv of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Helen H. Jensen is an associate professor of economics and head of the Food and Nutrition Policv Division, CARD. This paper was prepared for the Allied Social Science Association meetings, January 5-7, 1996, San Francisco, CA. Dr. Jensen received partial funding support from the Food Safety Consortium. Journal Paper No . .1-16643 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa, Project No. 2865.