became a vital catalyst to USDA’s implementation of the Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis
and Critical Control Point (PR/HACCP) system for meat and poultry inspection in the late 1990s.
The 1997(3) peak in beef NIDX was due to a massive recall of 25 million pounds of ground beef in
the midwest U.S. Media reports of beef safety surged drastically in 2003(4) and 2004(1) when the
first case of BSE in U.S. was discovered in Washington state.
The poultry NIDX reached one of its highest levels at 24.25 when fear of listeria contamination
prompted gigantic recall of chicken and turkey products in the fourth quarter of 2002. A peak
score of 34.5 coincides with the outbreak of avian flu in Asia in 2004(1). The highest poultry NIDX
(37.75) occured in the last quarter of 2005 following warnings of potential international bird flu
pandemic.
Unlike beef and poultry, pork received less media attention partly because it was less often
implicated in large-scale outbreaks than beef and poultry. However, listeria and other bacteria
contaminations have been traced to products with pork as the ingredient from time to time.
In contrast to the number of negative news reports that constantly made the headlines, articles
that can be classified as being positive occured rather sporadically. Both poultry and pork received
some degree of positive media coverage in 1996 when a new variant of CJD was first linked to eating
contaminated beef, and during the 2003(4)-2004(1) period in the midst of the first U.S. mad cow
case. In addition, some of the non-zero beef, pork and poultry PIDXs during the late 1990s were
a result of favorable coverage following the implementation of the PR/HACCP system.
3.2 Meat data
Quarterly meat data during the 1980(3)-2004(4) period are used in the empirical analysis. The
disappearance data published in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic
Research Service (ERS) Red Meats Yearbook and Poultry Yearbook are taken to be the basic con-
sumption quantity data for the period 1982-2003. Data for 2004 and 2005 are from the Feburary
2006 issue of ERS Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry outlook. The beef price is the average retail price
of choice beef. The pork price is the average retail price of pork. Following the procedure specified
in Piggott and Marsh, the poultry price is a weighted average of chicken and turkey retail prices.
Quantity data are converted to retail weight using the conversion factors available online from the
ERS Food Consumption Data System. Population data used to convert aggregate quantities to per