Small is beautiful: firm size, prevention and food safety

Food safety crises have led governments to increase food firms' responsibility by asking them to voluntarily implement prevention efforts. In this article, we explore the relationship between food firms' size and their level of prevention efforts. We show that when cross-contamination between units is unlikely, small firms undertake greater prevention efforts than large firms. But when cross-contamination between units is possible, the effort-size curve is an inverted U-shape. Using these results, we discuss food safety laws in Europe and in the US, which differ in how they deal with the size of food firms' operations. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.