increase they adopt more forward traceability both in poultry and meat plants. Size is a
factor in backward traceability only in poultry plants overall, and large and small plants
versus very small plants. Both meat and poultry plants adopt more forward than
backward traceability.
Data Sources
Our target sample includes 192 Iowa based federal or state inspected meat plants. They
are listed as licensees in the website of Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land
Stewardship (IDALS) Meat and Poultry Bureau.7 The majority of the companies in this
sample are small or very small firms, yet there are nationally known large plants, as well.
The information on the small and very small plants’ traceability activities should be
complementary to the research studied the impact of HACCP Rule on small or very small
processors (Siebert, Nayga and Hooker, 200l; Antle, 2001; Boland, Peterson-Hoffman
and Fox, 2001).
The survey includes 43 questions in total; 16 questions on the plant’s traceability
activities, 8 questions on the plant’s production process, 6 questions on the plant’s
products, and 13 questions on the plant’s characteristics. The survey questions are
reviewed by the IDALS bureau and several industry contacts for feedback purposes but
no endorsement or responsibility is implied.
Econometric Modeling
In addition to reporting a summary of responses to the survey, we will estimate an
ordered logit equation where propensity to adopt a traceability level or category is
modeled as a function of firm’s characteristics. This is in line with the approach taken in
Hassan, Green and Herath (2006) to food safety and quality activities of Canadian meat
processors. Also, Souza-Monteiro and Caswell (2006) utilizes a binomial logit model to
explain the adoption of traceability at the farm level in Portuguese pear industry, where
the choice is over EurepGAP (European Retailers for Good Agricultural Practices)
standards versus the mandatory E.U. level. Another approach is provided in Jayasinghe-
Mudalige and Spencer (2006). They estimate propensities of the Canadian red meat and
poultry processing sector to adopt enhanced food safety controls as a function of firm
level characteristics and other factors. They construct a dependent variable (the
propensity to implement enhanced food safety controls) in the form of multiplicative and
additive indexes based on the responses to their survey and estimate a regression equation
using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) procedure.
The relationship between level of traceability adoption and plant’s characteristics is
written as
7 For more information on the plants, see http://www.kellysolutions.com/ia/MeatPoultry/ .