plants comply with Salmonella standards under a program established and conducted by FSIS.
Large plants (more than 500 workers) had to comply with the regulation by January 31 of 1998,
and small (10-500 employees) and very small plants (and fewer than 10 employees with sales
less than $2.5) had until January 31 in 1999 and 2000, respectively, to comply.
Under HACCP, plants had to develop a HACCP plan with associated SSOPs that
outlined tasks required to implement the HACCP plan. plants also had to conduct sanitation,
cleaning, and process control tasks, as required by the SSOPs. Some SSOPs were mandated by
FSIS and some were under the discretion of the plant.
The Model
The goal of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the effort devoted to performing
sanitation and process control tasks and the use of food safety technology on plant costs.
Sanitation and process control tasks are jointly determined by the plant and FSIS in that the plant
constructs sanitation and HACCP plans but these plans are subject to the approval of FSIS and
many of the required tasks are monitored by FSIS inspectors. Nevertheless, since most plants
have some tasks that are out of compliance, plants have some choice as to how much effort to
put forth. If the mandated amount of effort exceeds that which is necessary to maintain food
safety, then excessive costs are imposed on the plant. However, if the mandated mount of effort
is less than that which a plant would do, then costs are not excessive.
Plant management determines the amount of food safety technology to use, i.e. there are
no regulatory mandates. This technology could lower production costs if it reduces labor inputs