Assessing the Impact of Regulated HACCP Systems on the Efficiency and Profitability of United States Meat Processing and Packing Sectors

162 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999.Major findings from the survey and the analysis reveal: (1) limited scope of HACCP implementation in the meat industry. Only 14.7% of the respondents have HACCP systems in place, (2) Small firms will incur an average of 2.5 cents per pound of amortized implementation and operating HACCP expenses, (3) The cost structures of all firm categories are non-homothetic. The non-homothetic cost function implies that the quadratic interaction terms between output and input prices are significant economic parameters that must be included in the estimated cost functions, (4) HACCP can reduce other input costs like labor and carcass used, (5) Firms with HACCP systems are more efficient than those without HACCP systems. Finns with HACCP enjoy 18--21% lower labor expenses than firms without HACCP systems. A target MOTAD analysis revealed that firms can realize positive profits with current diverse processes and products with slight variation of the scope of output. The hypothesis that mandatory HACCP systems may negatively affect small firms profitability is not confirmed in this study. HACCP will improve the efficiency of firms in the meat industry.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD