Modeling farm-level strategies for improving food safety in the dairy chain

Abstract

Increasing public awareness of food safety concerns, together with the recognized importance of an integrated ‘farm to table’ approach to food safety, are reaching all the way to the practices and procedures used on farms. This has created the need to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of alternative strategies for increasing food safety on the dairy farm as being part of the chain. The objectives of this study were to (1) examine the optimal farm strategies for achieving different levels of chemical and microbiological food safety in the dairy chain, (2) provide insight into the effect of farm size on these strategies and economic consequences both for the farm and the chain. The study starts with developing a set of control measures that could be implemented at different points on a farm and within the chain. The extra costs of implementing and maintaining these measures were calculated using a partial budgeting method. The effectiveness of the measures at improving food safety was assessed by 22 experts using adaptive conjoint analysis. This information on alternatives, costs, and effectiveness was used to build an integer linear programming model that minimized the costs of attaining different food safety levels over the entire chain. For the two scenarios, one each for the chain involving the 50- and 250-milking cow farm as part of the chain, results demonstrate an upward sloping relationship between the food safety levels and the corresponding extra costs both for the farm and the chain. Relatively low food safety levels in the chain (up to 50% of the maximum) can be achieved at low extra cost for the farm (up to €0.10 and €0.34 per ton of milk in the 50- and 250-cow scenario, respectively). The results for higher food safety levels in the chain (approaching the maximum of 100%) reveal that these levels can only be achieved with the active contribution of the farm at almost all possible action points. Irrespective of farm size, this results in a steep rise in extra chain costs (up to €44.37 and €39.63 per ton of milk in the 50- and 250-cow scenario, respectively), with more than 60% share in the farm stage. Changes in the cost-effectiveness of some farm control measures in the 250-cow farm scenario, due to lower extra costs on a per unit basis, do not result in notable differences in farm strategies, compared to the 50-cow farm scenario. Therefore, an increase of farm size does not affect the burden put on the farm stage for achieving high food safety levels in the chain.