Measuring the Benefits of Safer Food
ERS established an extramural research program to measure the benefits of safer food in 1999. Following a competitive selection process, funding from a special appropriation was awarded for two cooperative research agreements to apply state-of-the-art economic analysis to estimate the benefits of improving food safety. The two projects are:
- "Estimating Consumer Benefits of Improving Food Safety,"
Jason Shogren, University of Wyoming.
- "Valuing Reductions in Foodborne Risk Associated with
Bacterial Pathogens," James Hammitt and Kip Viscusi, Harvard
University.
Both projects are using innovative methodologies to measure consumers' willingness to pay for reducing the risks from microbial pathogens in foods.
Valuing the Health Benefits of Food Safety
Federal agencies use different valuation method to estimate the costs of illness, making it difficult to compare program benefits across agencies. Different programs could be more readily compared if there was a consensus approach to assigning values to risk reductions. As a first step towards generating a consensus, several agencies including ERS organized a conference held at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, in September 2000. The conference proceedings, Valuing the Health Benefits of Food Safety, are available.
The issues discussed at the conference included how to estimate the value of a statistical life; the advantages of willingness-to-pay (contingent valuation), revealed willingness-to-pay (hedonic measures), and cost-of-illness estimates of the costs of foodborne illness; and how to measure the pain, suffering, and indirect productivity losses associated with foodborne illness.
|
