Economies of Capacity Use in Decontamination of Pig Carcasses

Abstract

This article analyzes the economies of capacity use regarding hot water decontamination to reduce postslaughter risk of pathogens in meat, taking interfarm heterogeneities of Salmonella risk and costs of transportation into account, using Denmark as a case study. If risk reduction goals are stated at the processing plant level, then the exploitation of the favorable cost-effectiveness properties of hot water slaughtering requires fairly ambitious risk reduction goals and thus high use of decontamination capacity. If instead risk reduction goals are formulated for the sector as a whole, the cost-effectiveness properties can be exploited even for relatively low-risk reduction goals.