Cost-Effective Hazard Control in Food Handling

We develop a bioeconomic model to investigate postharvest food quality control. The trade-off between costly intervention and economic damage is studied when economic parameters, such as fixed and variable costs of control, and biological parameters, such as the stochastic rate of contamination and the growth rate of contaminants, are altered. The model can accommodate alternative environmental settings. Regulations through random inspections and through terminal inspections are analyzed. As an illustration, optimal actions to control insect infestations in stored wheat are simulated and found to be in accord with commercial practice. Key words: bioeconomics, food quality, grain storage, intervention strategies, spoilage. Assurance of food safety is problematic be-cause of uncertainties in detection, untracea-bility of source, and scientific ignorance about the relationships between cause and effect. Thus, market failures abound in the econom-ics of food quality (Antle). In recent years, food safety has assumed greater prominenc