Food-Borne Illnesses | Private Inspection Would Improve Meat Safety

E.C. Pasour Jr. is an economist at North Carolina State University.

Summary: Private inspection firms driven by market incentives can provide consumers with more effective safeguards against tainted meat than federal inspection. A private firm inspecting meatpacking plants would be profitable only as long as its inspections accurately reflected the quality of the meat. If consumers became ill after eating meat inspected by a particular firm, that firm would soon go out of business. Thus, the profit incentive would stimulate more careful inspection of...

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