A new initiative lead by ARE faculty will explore the use of insurance as a tool for food safety risk management.

Rapid advances in public health surveillance, pathogen typing, and product traceability, are making it easier to link food-borne illness outbreaks to specific foods and individual producers. As a consequence, food producers throughout the supply chain can face an increasing risk of civil liability, recall expenses, and reputational damage.

A project recently funded by the USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program will explore the use of insurance as a tool for food safety risk management. Research and outreach activities will examine factors related to the supply and demand for product liability and product contamination insurance, and will explore policy options to help address this form of risk in both produce farm and food manufacturing operations.

This five-year multidisciplinary project will be lead by Kathryn Boys, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.  Other key project collaborators include NC State’s Barry Goodwin (Ag and Resource Econ.) and Rebecca Dunning (Horticultural Science; CEFS), and Timothy Lytton of Georgia State University’s College of Law.