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OFFSETTING BEHAVIOR AND THE BENEFITS OF FOOD SAFETY REGULATION
Author(s) -
MILJKOVIC DRAGAN,
NGANJE WILLIAM,
ONYANGO BENJAMIN
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of food safety
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.427
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1745-4565
pISSN - 0149-6085
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-4565.2008.00138.x
Subject(s) - harm , food safety , business , food prices , environmental health , public economics , economics , food security , food science , medicine , psychology , biology , social psychology , agriculture , ecology
ABSTRACT Many regulatory, safety and health policies are adopted to reduce harm to potential victims from accidents and other harmful events. Attenuation and, sometimes, even reversal of the direct policy effect on expected harm may occur because of offsetting behavior (OB) by potential victims, as they reduce care in response to the policy. This research determines that OB in consumers may be responsible for an increase in food poisoning cases after new, more stringent food safety policies are enacted and implemented in the food processing sector. This behavioral anomaly indicates serious deviation from rational choice and possibly helps explain the growing gap between the decrease in pathogen bacteria level recorded in meat processing plants and the increasing number of outbreaks of food poisoning cases caused by these bacteria.PRACTICAL APPLICATION Changes in subjects' preferences for level of cooking of hamburger as a result of positive and negative messages regarding food safety was measured. The results of this experiment suggest that people exhibit offsetting behavior as a reaction to policies enacted to improve food safety record and protect consumers from getting ill by some of the deadly bacteria found in ground beef. Policy action was introduced ex post , i.e., after subjects in the study adjusted their preferences accounting for knowledge about the food safety problem. The information, although true, was also at least partially irrelevant, since it is related to food safety measures in meat processing plants rather than in retail stores, restaurants or households, and meat contamination is quite possible to occur at any segment between the moment when meat leaves the processing facility until it is consumed in households or restaurants. This behavioral anomaly helps explain the growing gap between the decrease in pathogen bacteria level recorded in meat processing plants and the increasing number of outbreaks of food poisoning cases caused by these bacteria.