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

Kathryn Boys, Julie Caswell (), Sandra Hoffmann and Samantha Colarusso

No 205870, 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

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.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Industrial Organization; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/205870/files/O ... Selected%20Paper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea15:205870

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.205870

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().