Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

In 2000, the fourth year of the current NE-165 Project, the members were involved in presenting three major research conferences, did extensive work on conferences to be held in year 5 of the Project, and continued to be very productive in completing research. The publication list for the year includes 71 journal articles, 31 book chapters, 27 station and agency publications, and 7 theses and dissertations. A book from the June 1998 conference, titled The Economics of HACCP: Costs and Benefits, edited by Unnevehr (IL) was published in 2000 by Eagan Press. In addition, a book based on the June 1999 conference, titled Transitions in Agbiotech: Economics of Strategy and Policy, edited by William Lesser (NY) was published by NE-165 on the internet (http://agecon.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/pubview.pl?pubid=24). Project members were very active in professional meetings and other fora across the United States and in Europe during the year, including at the summer meeting of the American Agricultural Economics Association in Tampa, Florida

The Project‘s premier accomplishments during 2000 were three major conferences. The first was a conference on The American Consumer in the Changing Food System (http://www.umass.edu/ne165/conferences2000/american_consumer.html ), co-chaired by Denbaly (USDA/ERS) and MacDonald (USDA/ERS), with participation by Cotterill (CT), held in May in Washington, DC. The overall objective of the conference was to take stock and improve our understanding of causes and effects of increasing concentration and coordination, particularly stressing the role of final consumer demand in driving these changes in industry organization. Several papers from the conference were published in Agribusiness (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/issuetoc?ID=76509433) edited by Cotterill (CT).

NE-165 also co-organized two additional conferences held in 2000. The first was Global Food Trade and Consumer Demand for Quality, co-organized with the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium -- IATRC, held June 26-27 in Montreal, Canada. The conference was co-chaired by Krissoff (USDA/ERS), Bohman (USDA/ERS), and Caswell (MA). This conference focused on the confluence of consumer and trade economics, both from a methodological and empirical standpoint. The objective was to exam-ine consumer demand for quality attributes (including food safety) in the context of a global economy and expanding international trade and the role of both private firm strategies and public policy in facilitating consumer choice and free trade. A book based on the conference will be published by Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

NE-165 also co-organized a conference on Valuing the Health Benefits of Food Safety held in September in Washington, DC. It was co-sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The conference committee was chaired by Nardinelli (FDA). The conference discussed economic issues related to valuing food safety risk reduction. It was a first step in developing a common approach to valuing risk reduction that will facilitate comparing programs across agencies. Because of the three conferences held in 2000, the Technical Committee did not meet separately during the year. Business meetings were held at the May and June conferences. The planning committees for the one conference and AAEA Annual Meeting activities to be held in 2001 (see below) met regularly during 2000 in person and through conference calls and email. During 2000, the Project continued to focus on improving communication among re-searchers and between researchers and decision makers. Our outputs are posted on the NE-165 web site and on AgEcon Search. This work is instantly available to researchers around the world. NE-165‘s core group at the Food Marketing Policy Center, University of Connecticut, and by subcontract at the University of Massachusetts, played a major role in supporting collaboration and communication. It helped organize the Project conferences, continued development of the NE-165 web site (http://www.umass.edu/ne165/), and maintained a listserv for the group. The Center continued to purchase and maintain 12 major data sets that are used on a regular basis by NE-165 members. The effectiveness of NE-165 research has been significantly enhanced by the availability of these detailed data sets. The core group also provides support for the NE-165 Working Paper and Reprint Series, which are distributed to over 200 economists, research libraries, and others worldwide. A CSREES Special Research Grant funds the Food Marketing Policy Center.

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