Evaluating Investments in Food Safety

In evaluating investments to improve food safety, risk assessment can provide the basis for understanding the sources of risk and their consequences.

This can better inform efforts to meet export market standards or the development of domestic food safety regulations.

Risk management, which is the policy process of making decision about where to reduce risks, must rely on risks assessment for guidance.

Risk management is a political process, and will reflect public perceptions about risk sources.

A process of risk communication that includes stakeholders can help policies that will be more easily enforced.

Cost benefit analysis of investments in food safety is straightforward for export markets, but more difficult for domestic public health.

The value of additional exports gained though access to new markets can be compared to the costs of private and public investments to improve food safety.

For domestic public health investments, cost of illness estimates have been used in several countries and some Bank studies.

These place a value on lost productivity from illness, including disability and death, and provide one way of comparing the benefits from reducing foodborne illness to the costs of investments to prevent or control hazards.

Such cost benefit analysis can aid in setting priorities for public interventions to improve food safety.

Evaluation of public food safety investments must also consider whether they replace current measures to avoid risk undertaken by consumers or producers.

If public action simply substitutes for private action then neither risks nor total costs of risk reduction are reduced.

This kind of evaluation is difficult, but crucial within developing food systems, where the incidence of food safety risks is undergoing change.
Evaluating Investments in Food Safety