Does Food Safety Information Impact U.S. Meat Demand?

A theoretical model of consumer response to publicized food safety information on meat demand is developed with an empirical application to U.S. meat consumption. Evidence is found for the existence of pre-committed levels of consumption, seasonal factors, time trends, and contemporaneous own- and cross-commodity food safety concerns. The average demand response to food safety concerns is small, especially in comparison to price effects, and to previous estimates of health related issues. This small average effect masks periods of significantly larger responses corresponding with prominent food safety events, but these larger impacts are short-lived with no apparent food safety lagged effects on demand. Key words: food safety information, demand system, U.S. meat demand. Food safety concerns in the United States have dramatically increased in the past decade with regard to incidences of contaminated meat products. Concerns have arisen because con-taminated meat products can result in seri-ous risk to the well being and health of con-sumers. Contamination comes from a myriad of sources, including but not limited to, out-breaks of Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and Salmonella (Centers for