Economics of food safety in chains: a review of general principles

The increased demand for safer food has resulted in the development and introduction of new food safety standards and regulations to reach a higher level of food safety. An integrated approach of controlling food safety throughout the entire food chain (`farm to table`) has become an important issue in improving the food safety level, but little is known about its economic aspects. This paper reviews important issues in this field, namely the definition of safe food, the nature of food safety hazards, the establishment of acceptable hazard levels, the strategy of food safety improvement and the methods for valuing the improvement. Methods considered are risk-risk analysis, health-health analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis and conventional cost-benefit analysis. Food safety itself is complex and there is no single indicator to measure it. Also, acceptable levels of food safety hazards need further elaboration to clarify the process of food safety improvement for producers. It is furthermore important to gain more insight into cost-effective ways of food safety improvement throughout the entire chain. Valuation of producers' benefits along the chain and their distribution are urgently needed.