Research On The Costs And Benefits Of Food Processing Enterprises Implementing HACCP Regulation

The Hazard Analysis and Control Point, based on the whole food processing procedure, is recognized as a food safety control system, which can effectively control foodborne diseases. What’s more, it is now the most authoritative, economic and effective method in the food safety field in the world. It has been more than30years since China began the Opening and Reform policy, China’s economic strength has been greatly enhanced and the food industry also witnessed considerable development, naturally, people’s requirement on the food safety becomes higher and higher. On the other hand, China is a member of WTO, which contributes to the boost of internatilnal trade. As the second-largest nation in scale of export and import, Chinese food products are increasingly involved in the worldwide competition. As a result, it is an inevitable tendency for domesitic food processing enterprises to get the HACCP certification. Given that the strength of Chinese food processing enterprises is uneven, and the whole food industry is far behind that of the developed countries in the world, so Chinese government has to introduce the corresponding laws and regulations, policies and standards to promote the development of HACCP system. This paper takes food processing enterprises as the research object, and deeply analyzes their costs and benefits of implementing HACCP regulation, then makes clear of the economic benefits if food processing enterprises implement the HACCP system, so it has an important significance for accelerating the development of HACCP system in the food industry.The main purpose of this paper is to prove that there is significance for food processing enterprises to implement HACCP. Based on the conclusion, this paper is to make policy recommendation on how to promote HACCP in China. The research work of this paper includes:firstly, based on the enterprise motivation and food processing enterprise regulation theory, this paper takes a research on the enterprises’motivations of implementing HACCP in Wuhan city, and it further enriches the behavior research of safety production of food enterprises. Secondly, through looking over the social statistics such as industry year-books to form an overall cognitive knowledge of the development and security conditions of the food processing enterprises in Wuhan city, we conduct a questionnaire survey and have an analysis of25food processing enterprises which have implemented quality management system. Thirdly, this paper measures the costs, benefits and other aspects brought by the HACCP system. Based on the current theory of HACCP and the mature HACCP cost-income measurement methods, this paper conducts a detailed accounting of the costs and benefits of four cases which have got HACCP certification. and compares the costs between different types of enterprises, summarizes the difficulties and experience during the implementation process of HACCP.According to the empirical analysis, this paper comes to the following conclusions:(1) The very important reasons why food processing enterprises want to implement the HACCP certification includes pursuing higher customer satisfaction, higher market share in the domestic market, and having the access to certain types of market.(2) Implementing HACCP system will cause cost pressure for food processing enterprises, mainly reflected in sales cost, labor costs, fixed costs, raw materials cost. However, the additional cost will be quite small compared to the benefits of the enterprises.(3) The cost of implementing HACCP increases along with the expansion of business. In fixed costs, training costs, inspecton and recording costs, small-scale enterprises are more than large and medium-sized enterprises; but for labor costs, raw material costs, rectifying costs and sales costs, large and medium-sized enterprises spend higher than small-scale enterprises. Judging from the per capita costs and unit cost of sales, the values of the large-scale enterprises are the lowest, which illustrates that the large-scale enterprises are more easily absorbed HACCP costs.(4) The HACCP system not only brings direct economic benefits, but also enhances the enterprises staffs’ awareness of food safety. Additionally, it will bring food processing enterprises larger product sales, higher customers’satisfaction, better product quality and other kinds of intangible benefits.