Buyers have imperfect information about the food safety efforts exerted by suppliers. To gather information about safety, buyers often employ sampling inspection. Sampling inspection exhibits sampling error so some unsafe product passes inspection and some safe product does not. This uncertainty influences buyer and supplier behavior. In this article, I use a principal-agent model to examine how sampling inspection policies influence food safety. I use the model to examine the sampling inspection policies in the 1996 Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point Act. I conclude that the regulation of sampling inspection procedures is an effective tool for policy makers who wish to improve food safety. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

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Contracts are an increasingly common method for coordinating exchange in the food industry. Contracts often include specifications for product attributes including food safety. One of the goals of explicit safety specifications is to discourage or deter suppliers who would deliver unsafe food. In this article, we use a principal-agent model in the context of adverse selection to examine how contracts that include traceability can be used to select against producers who cannot meet a processor's safety specifications. We find that the motivation to select against unsafe producers depends on the magnitude of the failure costs and the proportion of the failure costs allocated to producers. We also identify the conditions under which the processor selects against unsafe producers regardless of traceability. Our results are important to regulators and negotiators who want to support safe producers and deter unsafe producers.

Acceptance sampling is often used to monitor the quality of raw materials and components when product testing is destructive, time-consuming, or expensive. In this paper we consider the effect of a buyer-imposed acceptance sampling policy on the optimal batch size and optimal quality level delivered by an expected cost minimizing supplier. We define quality as the supplier's process capability, i.e., the probability that a unit conforms to all product specifications, and we assume that unit cost is an increasing function of the quality level. We also assume that the supplier faces a known and constant ''pass-through'' cost, i.e., a fixed cost per defective unit passed on to the buyer. We show that the acceptance sampling plan has a significant impact on the supplier's optimal quality level, and we derive the conditions under which zero defects (100% conformance) is the policy that minimizes the supplier's expected annual cost.

Abstract-Errors in traceability can significantly impact the moral hazard associated with producing safe food. The effect of moral hazard depends on the proportion of unsafe food costs that can be allocated to the responsible producer, which depends on the efficiency of the traceability system. In this paper, we develop a model that identifies the minimum level of traceability needed to mitigate moral hazard and motivate suppliers to produce safe food. Regulators and consumer can use the results of this research to design regulations and contracts that mitigate moral hazard and motivate producers to deliver safe food.