Sales of private goods with affiliated public good attributes have markedly risen in recent years. This fact is difficult to explain within the paradigm of purely self-interested behavior. This paper investigates factors influencing consumer demand for pork products with certifications related to the environment, animal welfare, and antibiotics. Using psychometric scaling techniques, we measure individuals’ degree of altruism and propensity toward free riding. Results of a random parameter logit model applied to choice data obtained from a nationwide survey in the United States indicates that more altruistic individuals are willing to pay more for pork products with public good attributes than less altruistic individuals and free riders. These results indicate that private purchases of goods with public-good attributes are not simply a result of individuals’ perceptions of the ability to mitigate private risks such as food safety, but that individuals are making private choices to affect public outcomes. Results have implications for policy makers weighing the relative costs and benefits of food labeling policies versus bans related to certain livestock production practices. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

There is considerable interest in projections of future productivity growth in agriculture. Whether one is interested in the outlook for global commodity markets, future patterns of international trade, or the interactions between land use, deforestation and ecological diversity, the rate of productivity growth in agriculture is an essential input. Yet solid projections for this variable have proven elusive -particularly on a global basis. This is due, in no small part, to the difficulty in measuring historical productivity growth. The purpose of this paper is to report the latest time series evidence on total factor productivity growth for crops, ruminants and non-ruminant livestock, on a global basis. We then follow with tests for convergence amongst regions, providing forecasts for farm productivity growth to the year 2040. The results suggest that most regions in the sample are likely to experience larger productivity gains in livestock than in crops. Within livestock, the nonruminant sector is expected to continue to be more dynamic than the ruminant sector. Given the rapid rates of productivity growth observed recently, non-ruminant and crop productivity in developing countries may be converging to the productivity levels of developed countries. For ruminants, the results show that productivity levels may be diverging between developed and developing countries.JEL Classification: D24, O13, O47, Q10

This paper reports an approach to enable rapid concentration and recovery of bacterial cells from aqueous chicken homogenates as a preanalytical step of detection. This approach includes biochemical pretreatment and prefiltration of food samples and development of an automated cell concentration instrument based on cross-flow microfiltration. A polysulfone hollow-fiber membrane module having a nominal pore size of 0.2 m constitutes the core of the cell concentration instrument. The aqueous chicken homogenate samples were circulated within the cross-flow system achieving 500-to 1,000-fold concentration of inoculated Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis and naturally occurring microbiota with 70% recovery of viable cells as determined by plate counting and quantitative PCR (qPCR) within 35 to 45 min. These steps enabled 10 CFU/ml microorganisms in chicken homogenates or 10 2 CFU/g chicken to be quantified. Cleaning and sterilizing the instrument and membrane module by stepwise hydraulic and chemical cleaning (sodium hydroxide and ethanol) enabled reuse of the membrane 15 times before replacement. This approach begins to address the critical need for the food industry for detecting food pathogens within 6 h or less.

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