|
In This Issue
|
 |
|
|
|
CREMe Quick Links
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Greetings,
|
|
|
In this issue we discuss how the economic
cost of food safety problems can now be
quantified.
Food related health problems, from obesity and
high salt levels, to potentially harmful
additives and
contaminants can be predicted with
accuracy from the available data.
|
|
Prevention is Better than Cure
|
|
|
We all know that prevention is better than
cure when it comes to health. This applies
equally to prevention of food safety problems
for your organisation regardless of whether
you are a government or industry body. The
cost of
prevention is far lower than the cost of
repairing the damage. And now, it is
possible to directly quantify the
economic cost of these food safety problems.
With CREMe you can calculate today's exposure
levels of the population to chemicals and
contaminants from food. Using standard
dose-response curves - these
exposure results can be converted to
probabilities of adverse health events for
the population.
Standard cost of illness data (see
USDA calculator here) can then be
applied in a straight forward accounting
exercise to calculate the harm done by food
safety problems.
For more severe events, involving the
actual death of consumers, the value of
statistical life data can be used to
calculate the cost of such a damaging event.
It is estimated that the average level for
the value of a statistical life is about
$5.5-$7.5 million.
Click
here for more information on this.
The willingness-to-pay measures for risk changes
(click
here for more on this) is another
interesting measure that can be applied to
place a value on the resulting changes in
health outcomes through an intervention by a
government agency or industry. CREMe's new
assessment comparison feature allows
you to easily assess the impact of food
safety interventions or initiatives. This
means that the
direct economic benefit of an intervention
can be calculated.
It seems easier to ignore prevention and to
pay for the cure when a problem arises. But,
of course, this is not advisable. In today's
competitive market the risk to the reputation
and the brand of an organisation is so high that
regaining lost value is not always possible.
Prevention of these problems is therefore
essential. Directors of business and public
departments have a duty of care to their
customers. In extreme circumstances, this can
lead to jail time if a director's actions
are found to be harmful and negligent.
Government organisations need to allocate
budget to food safety assessment as well as
healthcare provision for their population.
The realisation that prevention is better
than cure is finally starting to sink in and
exactly how much better can now be
accurately quantified in dollars or euro terms.
|
|
