Inspection agency monitoring of food safety in an emerging economy: A multilevel analysis of Brazil's beef production industry

Abstract

This research examines the role of the food inspection agency in detecting contamination among producers in the global beef supply chain, focusing on regulations and inspection practices for Brazilian beef slaughterhouses. Research on food safety has suggested that several factors, at both the agency and location levels, may explain the effectiveness of regulatory efforts to detect foodborne contamination in producer processes. In emerging economies, such factors may include the resources available to both the agency inspection units and the processing plants, the overall capacity utilization in the industry, the number of interactions between the inspection agency and the processing plants, and the heterogeneity of the slaughterhouses under a single inspection regime. Using regional inspection unit agency data from the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, we conduct a multilevel analysis of the agency and location factors that may reduce the number of localized contamination cases in the beef supply chain. Our evidence suggests that federal agency and local resource availability and the heterogeneity of the slaughterhouses under inspection are critical institutional factors for the effective regulatory control and detection of contamination incidents among beef source producers in Brazil. We draw on both institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Zucker, 1987) and the extant food supply chain literature to explain our findings, and we offer some guidance for improving food safety in this critical food industry. Finally, we generalize our findings to other food inspection contexts and offer some ideas for further research.