The USDA Economic Research Service released a 64 page report on the costs associated with meeting safety standards established by the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (LGMA). The costs with the LGMA should be similar to what will be required by the FSMA Produce Safety Rule. This is based upon 7 produce operations and was conducted in 2012.
The paper acknowledged that it is difficult to assess the costs, and thus come up with average cost/farm or cost/acre for compliance. They were able to determine where those costs went on average:
- food safety staff - 38%
- foremen food safety time - 32%
- audits - 17%
- lost product due to animal intrusion - 11%
- water testing - 2%
- Other costs not uniformly collected included harvest worker training, glove use, raw product testing, and external record keeping management systems.
Estimated costs for foreman (based upon time allocation) ranged from 80,000 to 1,012,000 million.
Firms averaged
Table 3
Range of costs per firm for different food safety practices
Range of costs ($) Number of observations
Low High
Cost per firm:
Total field-level audits 27,150 305,430 6
Raw product testing 0 90,000 6
External record keeping 0 8,868 7
Training 19,900 71,398 4
Protective clothing 12,000 52,000 5
Total water testing 7,000 85,000 7
Lost product 0 304,000 7
Equipment cleaning/sanitizing 21,000 250,000 4
Hired toilet/handwashing facilities 45,451 130,367 3
and services
Note: In reporting individual costs per firm, there is a mix of costs for different-sized operations, and also a mix of costs for leafy greens and the whole produce operation. The combination of firms reporting data for any cost also varies. As a result, the numbers in table 3 cannot be added together to get a low and a high for all costs. Source: USDA, Economic Research Service.
How solid are these costs? Good question. They are based upon interviews...so if you ask someone what they are spending on mandated oversight....there may be a tendency to look at worst case scenario. Plus were there savings from improved practices?...hard to say. I believe these costs increases are there, especially compared to processing facilities that already have much of the infrastructure in place.
Economic Information Bulletin Number 173
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/83771/eib-173.pdf?v=42893
Food Safety Practices and Costs Under the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement
Linda Calvin, Helen Jensen, Karen Klonsky, and Roberta Cook
June 2017
