An economic exposition of Chinese food safety issues

David Leonardo Ortega, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation is comprised of seven essays that provide an economic perspective on Chinese food safety issues. This work explores various explanations for food safety problems in China ranging from structural reasons to problems found in the Chinese agricultural marketing system and provides an investigation into consumer and producer behavior. Due to the broad scope of this work, independence of research objectives, methodologies and data, each chapter of this dissertation is an independent essay. The first essay provides an overview of the Chinese agricultural marketing system and explores food safety issues from a marketing utility perspective. The second essay focuses on measuring Chinese consumer preferences for select food safety attributes in the pork market. A choice experiment framework is used in conjunction with the use of random parameters and latent class models to estimate consumer demand heterogeneity for various product attributes. The third essay expands on this work and provides an alternative welfare measure allowing for the evaluation of aggregate market impacts of different food safety policies in China. The fourth essay provides an economic assessment of Chinese consumer preferences for food safety verification in one of the fastest growing food commodities in China, ultra-high temperature processed milk. The fifth essay examines demand for Chinese food products abroad, by estimating American consumer preferences for imported aquaculture products within a country-of-origin and verification entity framework using a modeling framework that allow for correlated preferences. The sixth essay explores the effects of food safety media headlines on consumer demand for imported food products and its effect on demand for Chinese aquaculture products. The final essay explores Chinese aquaculture producer behavior and their willingness to change and adopt certain production practices related to food safety and quality. Using an economic experiment, their preference for domestic versus foreign food safety inspection was assessed. The economic and food policy implications of all seven of these essays are discussed throughout this dissertation.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Wang, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Agricultural economics

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