Did BSE Announcements Reduce Beef Purchases?

By Fred Kuchler and Abebayehu Tegene

Economic Research Report No. (ERR-34) 45 pp, December 2006

This study examines consumers’ retail purchases of beef and beef products for evidence of a response to the 2003 U.S. government announcements of finding cows infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). We constructed weekly estimates of quantities of beef products consumers purchased from 1998 through 2004 using ACNielsen Homescan data. While the variance in purchases was large, most could be explained by trend and seasonality. Deviations from established purchase patterns following the BSE announcements varied across beef products, but were limited to no more than 2 weeks in all cases.

Keywords: food safety, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE, retail beef purchases, government announcements, retrospective analysis, ERS, USDA

In this report ...

Chapters are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

• Report summary: PDF, 59 KB | HTML

• Abstract, Acknowledgments, Contents, and Summary, 94 kb.
• Introduction, 47 kb.
• Using ACNielsen Homescan Panel Data To Track Weekly Beef Purchases, 49 kb.
• Weekly Purchase Data Display Strong Seasonal Patterns, 251 kb.
• Modeling Fresh Beef Purchases, 156 kb.
• Modeling Frozen Beef Purchases, 116 kb.
• Modeling Frankfurter Purchases, 118 kb.
• Generalizing Results to Other Types of Food Safety News, 61 kb.
• References, 52 kb.
• Appendix, 54 kb.

• Entire document, 556 kb.

Updated date: December 29, 2006