Initial Analysis of Adoption of Animal Welfare Guidelines on the U.S. Egg Industry, An

Bruce Babcock, John Miranowski and Roxana Carbone

Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University

Abstract: Animal welfare activists have succeeded in persuading egg purchasers to purchase only eggs that are produced according to new animal welfare guidelines. This agreement will increase the cost of producing eggs that are sold in the shell. To date, the guidelines do not apply to eggs that are broken and further processed. This agreement creates a bifurcated market: high-cost eggs in the shell and low-cost eggs that are processed. We conduct a qualitative analysis of the effects on consumers and producers from creation of this new market structure. Restricting the movement of low-cost eggs into the in-shell market in periods of peak demand will increase the price of in-shell eggs and will decrease the price of eggs destined for processing in these periods. Winners from adopting this restriction are those producers who produce only for the in-shell market. Losers from this restriction are producers who only produce for the processing market. We are currently undertaking a companion study that will provide estimates of the magnitude of the gains and losses from this new market structure.

Keywords: animal welfare; egg production; supply control. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/pdf/02bp37.pdf Full Text (application/pdf)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/synopsis/?p=385 Online Synopsis (text/html)

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:ias:cpaper:02-bp37

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().