Economic Measures of Interventions: Building a Framework for Prioritizing Opportunities to Reduce Food Safety Risk
Workshop held at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts, December 2 and 3, 2004
Presenters, Chairs and Organizers
Julie Caswell is a Professor of Resource Economics and Adjunct Professor of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics and Economics from the University of Wisconsin. Her research focuses on understanding the operation of domestic and international food systems, with particular interest in the economics of food quality and labeling, especially for safety and nutrition, and international trade. Her edited books include Economics of Food Safety, Valuing Food Safety and Nutrition, and Global Food Trade and Consumer Demand for Quality. Dr. Caswell has provided expertise to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the National Academies of Science on food safety and labeling issues. She is a founding member of the Food Safety Research Consortium (http://www.rff.org/fsrc/). She has held numerous senior positions with the American Agricultural Economics Association. Dr. Caswell will present a Distinguished Faculty Lecture at the University of Massachusetts in 2004-2005 and is the recipient of an Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Food and Natural Resources. She has taught graduate courses in Poland, Italy, Brazil, and Spain. For more information and a full publications list see: http://www.umass.edu/resec/faculty/caswell/index.html.
Caroline Smith DeWaal is the director of the food safety program for the Center for Science in the Public Interest and co-author of Is Our Food Safe? A Consumer's Guide to Protecting Your Health and the Environment (Three Rivers Press, 2002). She represents CSPI in Congress and in the regulatory arena on such issues as meat and poultry safety, seafood safety, food additives, pesticides and sustainable agriculture, and animal drugs. She also has extensive media exposure on these issues, including appearances on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Nightline, Dateline, and regular coverage on evening network news shows, and in national newspapers, like the Washington Post, New York Times, and USA Today.
Ms. DeWaal is the leading consumer analyst on reform of laws and regulations governing food safety. Since 1999, she has maintained and annually published a listing of foodborne illness outbreaks organized by food source that now contains over ten years of outbreaks reports. She has presented CSPI's outbreak database at numerous scientific conferences, including the American Public Health Association, International Association for Food Protection, and the American Society for Microbiology.
Over the years, Ms. DeWaal has testified before numerous committees of Congress, including the House Committee on Government Operations, House Committee on Commerce, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, and Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. She has presented papers on food safety at over 50 scientific and public policy conferences. She participated in the World Health Organization Strategic Planning on Food Safety and other international meetings. She represented the International Association of Consumer Food Organizations at the 9th Session of the Codex Committee on Meat and Poultry Hygiene in New Zealand. She was a member of the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection from 1997-2000. She is currently chair of the Editorial Board of the Food and Drug Law Journal and a member of the International Association of Food Protection.
Prior to coming to CSPI, Ms. DeWaal was Director of Legal Affairs for Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, where she spearheaded Public Voice's lobbying effort on seafood safety in Congress, at the FDA, and in the media. Ms. DeWaal graduated from the University of Vermont and Antioch School of Law. She is a member of the Massachusetts Bar.
Michael Doyle is a Regents Professor of Food Microbiology and Director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. He is an active researcher in the area of food safety and security and works closely with the food industry on issues related to the microbiological safety of foods. Dr. Doyle is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he received his B.S. degree in Bacteriology, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Food Microbiology. He serves on food safety committees of many scientific organizations and has served as a scientific advisor to many groups, including the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine, International Life Sciences Institute-North America, the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He has more than 500 scientific publications and has given more than 500 invited presentations at national and international scientific meetings. In addition, he has received several research awards from academic and national scientific organizations, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the International Association for Food Protection and the Institute of Food Technologists, and was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences-Institute of Medicine.
Sandra Hoffmann is a Fellow with Resources for the Future. She has a Ph.D. from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., she practic ed law with McKenna, Conner and Cuneo in Washington, D.C. where she specialized in pesticide and chemical manufacture regulatory law. Her research at RFF focuses on the economics of public policy affecting health risks, including food safety regulation, pesticide regulation, and water quality. She looks at both regulatory and common law approaches to managing health risk. She has worked on Food Safety Consortium research projects, including development of a comparative food safety pathogen risk-ranking model. She is coeditor of a forthcoming book on designing analysis to support priority setting in an integrated risk-based food safety regulatory system.
Neal Hooker received a Ph.D. in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts in 1997. He then completed a postdoctoral research associate position at UMass and concurrently held a post-doc in the Center for Food Safety at Texas A&M University. Dr. Hooker next moved to an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at Colorado State University. Subsequently, Dr. Hooker moved to the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at The Ohio State University where he is an Assistant Professor with a research, teaching, and extension position. Dr. Hooker's primary research lies in the area of marketing and management within the agribusiness sector. He is particularly interested in how quality attributes, and most especially food safety and nutrition attributes, are communicated, controlled, and (where appropriate) certified. These issues require special attention when considering the policy, international trade, and E-Business implications of quality differentiation for various types and sizes of firms and farms.
H. Scott Hurd is Associate Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Production Animal Medicine, Biosafety Institute for Genetically Modified Agricultural Products (BIGMAP), Iowa State University. Dr. Hurd's current research is to identify, quantify and document the public health impacts of various on-farm management practices such as salmonella control and antibiotic use in food animals. His field research activities focused on epidemiology and ecology of foodborne pathogens (Salmonella, Campylobacter) in swine and their environment. He has identified important preharvest control points that will reduce the prevalence of pathogens in market swine and turkeys. He has extensive experience in systems and risk assessment modeling. He was analyst on the first BSE risk assessment (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in the U.S., published in 1990. He has also conducted quantitative risk assessments for tuberculosis in Michigan white-tailed deer, avian influenza, hog cholera, Salmonella enteritidis in shell eggs, and xenotransplantation from swine. Most recently, he published a quantitative analysis of the public health risk from using macrolide antibiotics in food animals and an analysis of the public health benefits from antibiotic use in poultry.
Helen H. Jensen is Professor of Economics and head of the food and nutrition policy research division in the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University. Her major areas of research are demand analysis, food and nutrition policy, food security, and the economics of food safety and food hazard control. Dr. Jensen is on the editorial boards of Agricultural Economics, Food Economics, and Agribusiness: An International Journal and recently was chair of the Food Safety and Nutrition Section of the American Agricultural Economics Association. She is currently serving on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences including the Institute of Medicine's Committee to Review the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Food Packages, the National Research Council's Committee on Assessing the Nation's Framework for Addressing Animal Diseases, and the Committee on National Statistics' Panel to review USDA's Measurement of Food Insecurity and Hunger. She was a member of the National Research Council's committee that issued a report on Countering Agricultural Bioterrorism. She has served on expert panels related to food safety, food insecurity and hunger and food programs. Dr. Jensen received a Ph.D. degree in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and joined the faculty at Iowa State University in 1985.
Derrick Jones is a senior civil servant and a member of the UK Government Economic Service. He joined the UK Food Standards Agency in September 2001 to head up the newly created economics and analytical services Division. Prior to joining the FSA, he worked in a number of Government Departments, dealing with transport, environment and regeneration issues.
Marie-José J. Mangen graduated from the University of Bonn (Germany) with the degree of Dipl.-Ing. agr. (equivalent to MSc) having specialised in animals science, and obtained a second MSc degree at Wageningen Agricultural University (The Netherlands), having specialised in Agricultural Economics and Marketing. She was working for 2 years in the market department of the Agriculture Ministry in Luxembourg (Luxembourg). From January 1998 until June 2002 she was employed at the Department of Social Sciences of Wageningen University (The Netherlands). The research she carried out resulted in a Ph.D. thesis, which was entitled "Economic Welfare Analysis of Simulated Control Strategies for Classical Swine Fever Epidemics." From August until November 2002 she worked as a 'consultant' for the Livestock Information and Policy Branch (AGAL) at the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome (Italy). Since January 2003 she is holding a post-doc position at the Agricultural Economic Research Institute and works in close collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health and Environment as an economist in the multi-disciplinary Campylobacter Risk Management Assessment (CARMA) project. Her tasks in this project are: a) to estimate the disease burden and the cost-of-illness associated with campylobacteriosis and sequelae in the Netherlands; b) to estimate the costs of possible intervention measures applied in the chicken meat chain in order to reduce campylobacters; and c) to apply a cost-utility analysis.
Paul E. McNamara is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics. His research and extension appointment is in the area of consumer economics and health economics. His Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics, with a minor in health economics. He also holds a Master in Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research interests concern the intersection of health economic s and consumer economics, with an emphasis on rural health and health economics in the food system. Dr. McNamara is active in consumer and health issues in Illinois and has served on the Board of the Illinois Rural Health Association. He has published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, the Journal of Food Protection, and the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics among other journals. In addition, he serves as the economics topics editor for the Rural Crossroads section of the Journal of Rural Health.
Ronald Meekhof is currently Principal Economist of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. He has served in that position since 1998. He is responsible for guiding and conducting cost benefit analyses of food safety regulations and directives affecting the meat, poultry, and egg products industry. He is also responsible for developing data and information resources used in conducting these analyses. Ron has also worked in USDA's Office of Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis where he was Deputy Director and assisted in the development of the office. From 1985 to 1995, Ron worked in the USDA's Office of the Chief Economist where he was responsible for resource conservation and food safety policy issues and analyses. Prior to that, Ron was with the Economic Research Service. Ron received a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University in 1997.
Gay Miller is a Professor at the University of Illinois. She holds appointments in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, Epidemiology Division; the Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine; and the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Dr. Miller's educational background is in both agricultural economics and veterinary medicine. Her DVM degree is from Ohio State University, and her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. are in agricultural economics with two of the three degrees from Ohio State and her M.S. degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia.
She is the author of over 100 scientific papers, with over half of her papers in refereed scientific journals. She has presented at numerous conferences, and national and international meetings in over 20 years as a faculty member.
Her primary research focus is on the economic impacts of disease control and prevention in food producing animals. Currently, her work relates to three broad areas of research: 1) food safety; she has joint projects with other faculty including surveys of veterinarians and pork producers on their attitudes about pork food safety production practices and on-farm HACCP program development; she also leads a project on the economic impact for pork producers and consumers arising from feedgrade antibiotic use in pork production as it relates to the development of antibiotic resistance, 2) production medicine; she has had a variety of projects in this area. A recent project was a large-scale M. hyopneumoniae vaccine trial in a multi-site pork production system in IL; and 3) systems design, management and the modeling of farm practices to control swine odor and enhance manure management.
William E. Nganje. 50% research and 50% teaching appointment. Teaching responsibility includes courses in Agribusiness Finance, Non-linear Functions Estimation, and the Economics of Food Safety. Research areas are Agribusiness Management and Finance, and Economics of Food Safety. Major departmental responsibilities in student support services include, senior advisor for the Agribusiness Club and member of the graduate student committee. Member of Joint ESCOP/ ECOP Food Safety Task Force to identify voids in food safety, teaching, research, and extension in the United States.
Michael Ollinger has been an economist at the Economic Research Service (ERS) of USDA since 1991. He came to ERS after graduating with a Ph.D. in economics from Washington University in St. Louis. His major areas of research are food safety and structural change. His most recent paper in the area of food safety is entitled "Meat and Poultry Plants' Food Safety Investments: Survey Findings" by Michael Ollinger, Danna Moore, and Ram Chandran (http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/tb1911/) and his most recent article in structural change is entitled "Technological Change and Economies of Scale in U.S. Poultry Processing" by Michael Ollinger, James M. MacDonald, and Milton Madison (forthcoming, American Journal of Agricultural Economics).
Mike Taylor is a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF) and chairs the steering committee of the Food Safety Research Consortium, a multidisciplinary, collaborative effort by RFF and six universities to improve the food safety system by developing risk ranking and priority-setting tools that policymakers and risk managers can use to better allocate research, regulatory, and educational resources and more effectively reduce food safety risks. Prior to joining RFF in 2000, Taylor's career included service as Administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (1994-1996), Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the Food and Drug Administration (1991-1994), 12 years practicing food and drug law in Washington with King & Spalding, and 16 months as Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Company. Taylor served as co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee that recently issued the report Intentional Human Dosing Studies for EPA Regulatory Purposes: Scientific and Ethical Issues (2004) and was a member of the NAS committees that issued reports on Dioxin and Dioxin-like Compounds in the Food Supply – Strategies to Decrease Exposure (2003) and Animal Biotechnology – Science-Based Concerns (2002). He received his law degree from the University of Virginia and his B.A. in political science at Davidson College.