Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
AFRE
Non Technical Summary
All Americans should have equal access to a safe, nutritious and secure food supply. However, the halal meat industry, vital to the Muslim faith and culture, has issues with food fraud. Despite the importance of this industry, halal meat food fraud in the U.S. is not well-researched.The goal of this project is to reduce the occurrence of halal meat food fraud in the United States. If this goal is met, both Muslim and non-Muslim consumers who demand halal meats can be confident in the legitimacy and quality of the products they are consuming. The fulfillment of this goal will also ensure that the growing U.S. Muslim population buys their halal meat from domestic producers, bolstering the U.S. agricultural economy rather than international producers. Furthermore, consumers who are attracted to the halal meat market for non-religious reasons, such as cleanliness and animal welfare standards, will also benefit from a reduction in halal meat food fraud.The issue of halal meat food fraud is also important to the larger community in terms of supporting cultural diversity, and increased agricultural economic opportunities, as the U.S. Muslim population and the global halal market are growing rapidly.Multiple steps will be taken to collect and produce data and results for this study.To meet our research objectives, a mixed methods approach will be employed including focus groups, surveys and an in-person willingness-to-pay assessment.Focus Groups:Focus groups will inform the development of surveys (discussed below). A consumer focus group will be conducted to understand preferences for halal meat certification and food fraud issues. Additionally, retailers and processors will be interviewed to gather motivations for halal production decisions and perceptions of food fraud.Surveys:Consumer, retailer, and processor surveys will be administered.Participants will rank the different halal certifications attributes based on characteristics such as environmental sustainability, animal welfare, trustworthiness, and adherence to religious standards. Additionally, the survey responses will provide explanations for these ranking related to personal morals, monetary drivers, market reliability, or product availability among other reasons that are may be influential in the halal supply or demand decisions.In-person willingness to pay with shoppers:An in-person experiment at a grocery store utilizing the same beef, lamb, and chicken products, labels, and choices as the consumer survey will be conducted.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
40%
Developmental
10%
Goals / Objectives
This project is unique because it investigates perceptions of halal meat food fraud at multiple points in the marketing chain including consumers, retailers, and processors. Through measuring agents' concerns, preferences, and perceptions related to halal meat food fraud, we will be able to pinpoint potential solutions and anti-fraud efforts, such as blockchain traceability technology. Our research fills an important gap in the literature and the food industry as halal meat food fraud is not well studied.Our long-term goal is to reduce halal meat food fraud. To meet this long-term goal there are three project objectives:1. Measure consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for, perceptions of, and trust in different halalcertification labels/types and verification technologies such as blockchains.2. Determine retailers' perceptions of and trust in different halal certification labels/types andverification technologies as well as their motivations for supplying/not supplying halal meat.3. Assess processors motivations for supplying/not supplying halal meat and willingness to adoptverification technologies such as blockchains.
Project Methods
To meet objectives, a mixed methods approach will be used and is detailed below:Focus Groups:We will follow best practices for focus group implementation (Morgan 1996). Consumer, Retailer, and Processorfocus groups will beconducted. Qualitatively, 10-20 phone, email, Zoom and/or in-person interviews will be conducted with individuals from each of thesemarket segments to gain better understanding of the reasons for their preferences and perceptions and to inform the development of surveys. A Michigan consumer focus groupwill be conducted to understand preferences for halal meat certification and verification technologies, and intricacies of food fraud issues. Retailers and processors will be interviewed to gather motivations for halal production decisions and perceptions of verification and traceability technology. Retailers will include small, medium, and large-scale businesses from across the U.S. and their anonymity will be maintained. Follow-up focus groups will be conducted after the broader surveys are conducted to refine results.Surveys:Consumer, retailer, and processor online surveys will be administered using MSU'saccess to Qualtrics. Respondents will be screened to include both Muslim andnon-Muslim individualsand suppliers from across the U.S. who carry/do not carry halal meats. Consumer WTP for halal certification attributes and verification technologies will be measured using a hypothetical choice experiment (CE) with beef, chicken, and lamb products. Best-worst scaling (BWS) in which participants rank the different halal certifications attributes based on characteristics such as environmental sustainability, animal welfare, trustworthiness, and adherence to religious standards will be used to quantitatively assess preferences that arose in the focus groups.BWS will be applied to elicit what morals, monetary drivers, market reliability, or product availability reasons are most influential in halal supplier decisions and the implementation of blockchain technology. Eliciting which characteristics of a certification process are most important to a supplier is necessary, as producer buy-in of technologies such as blockchain are critical for their adoption (Foster, Schweihofer et al., 2018; Schroeder and Tonsor, 2012; Schulz and Tonsor, 2010a,b). Past traceability and verification efforts did not gain traction because of producer reluctance and uncertainty (Schroeder and Tonsor, 2012; Schulz and Tonsor, 2010).IP WTP Assessments:An IP WTP assessment, such as a real choice experiment or Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction utilizing the same beef, lamb, and chicken products, labels, and choices as in the consumer survey will be conducted with at least 100 Michigan Muslim and non-Muslim halal consumers, which will add robustness to the hypothetical CE results. The data from the IP WTP assessment will be necessary to calibrate the survey data and adjust for hypothetical bias, which is the difference between the values elicited in a hypothetical context, such as a survey, and those elicited in a real context, such as an actual market (Harrison and Rutström 2008).Analysis:The qualitative data from the focus groups will be coded according to Morgan (1996) to create frequency distributions of participants' main concerns, general attitudes, and perceptions. The themes that emerge from the qualitative analysis will be used to select the attributes in the discrete choice and BWS experiments on the three surveys, whichwill be analyzed using well documented methods such as mixed logit and latent class models to account for preference heterogeneity. These methods have been usedin similar projects (McKendree et al., 2018; McKendree et al., 2013; Ortega et al., 2011). These models will be used to estimate WTP for a given attribute across product types, as WTP for credence attributes has been found to vary across species and products (Ortega and Wolf 2018). The data from the IP WTP assessment will be used to calibrate the consumer survey data and adjust for hypothetical bias - the difference between the values elicited in the survey, and those elicited in the actual market(Harrison and Rutström 2008). This calibration method, similar to List and Shogren (1998) and Fox et al. (1998), provides a cost-effective way to estimate consumer WTP.Efforts:Results from this study will be the first of their kind and will be used to inform stakeholders in the halal supply chain of consumers' most preferred halal certification process to better meet demand. To reach the target audiences, the results of this study will be shared via academic and extension conferences, academic and extension publications, and additional outreach opportunities as they arise.Evaluation:Formative: The PD and mentor will complete a semi-annual evaluation and planning form in which expectations, degree progress, and research goals are affirmed. The PD's doctoral committee will also serve as an advisory board and will assess progress towards research goals and the doctoral degree. The PD's progress toward completion of the research objectives will be assessed by the milestones of having the first portion of obj's 1 data and objs' 2 & 3 data statistically analyzed by the end of Y1, providing three abstracts/drafts from the research objs by the end of Y2, and submitting all three planned papers for review and publication by the end of Y3.Summative:The PD will attend professional development sessions at AAEA annual meetings tocreate a professional website and social media platform; successfulestablishment of this platform will indicate the achievement of this goal. Manuscripts resultingfrom this project will be submitted to agricultural economics journals for publication. Finally, theoverall objective of training this future researcher will be assessed by time to completion of herdegree program and job opportunities available to her at that time.References:Foster, T. P., et al. "Comparison of Beef Traceability in Serial and Parallel Fabrication Systems Using RFID and Two-Dimensional Barcodes1."Translational Animal Science, vol. 2, no. 1, Apr. 2018, pp. 101-10.Fox, John A., et al. "CVM?X: Calibrating Contingent Values with Experimental Auction Markets."American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 80, no. 3, Aug. 1998, pp. 455-65.Harrison, Glenn W., and E. Elisabet Rutström. "Risk Aversion in the Laboratory."Research in Experimental Economics, vol. 12, Emerald (MCB UP), 2008, pp. 41-196.List, John A., and Jason F. Shogren. "Calibration of the Difference between Actual and Hypothetical Valuations in a Field Experiment."Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, vol. 37, no. 2, Oct. 1998, pp. 193-205.McKendree, M.G.S., Widmar, N. O., Ortega, D. L., & Foster, K. A. (2013). "Consumer preferences for verified pork-rearing practices in the production of ham products."Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics,38(3), 397-417.McKENDREE, Melissa G. S., et al. "ANIMAL WELFARE PERCEPTIONS OF THE U.S. PUBLIC AND COW-CALF PRODUCERS."Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, vol. 50, no. 4, Nov. 2018, pp. 544-78.Morgan, David L. "Focus Groups."Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 22, no. 1, Aug. 1996, pp. 129-52.Ortega, David L., et al. "Modeling Heterogeneity in Consumer Preferences for Select Food Safety Attributes in China."Food Policy, vol. 36, no. 2, Apr. 2011, pp. 318-24.Ortega, David L., and Christopher A. Wolf. "Demand for Farm Animal Welfare and Producer Implications: Results from a Field Experiment in Michigan."Food Policy, vol. 74, Jan. 2018, pp. 74-81.Schroeder, Ted C., and Glynn T. Tonsor. "International Cattle ID and Traceability: Competitive Implications for the US."Food Policy, vol. 37, no. 1, Feb. 2012, pp. 31-40.Schulz, Lee L., and Glynn T. Tonsor. "Cow-Calf Producer Perceptions Regarding Individual Animal Traceability."Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, vol. 42, no. 4, Nov. 2010, pp. 659-77.