Do Consumers Really Care? An Economic Analysis of Consumer Attitudes Towards Food Produced Using Prohibited Production Methods

Taking account of consumer preferences for food produced using prohibited production methods matters if welfare of analysis of potential trade deals is to be considered meaningful. To enable this to occur it is necessary to appropriately examine consumer preferences. To this effect, we report the findings from four discrete choice experiments examining UK consumer attitudes for food produced using several agricultural production methods currently prohibited in the UK e.g., chlorine washed chicken. Our results reveal negative preferences for these forms of agricultural production methods whereas EU food safety standards are highly valued. Willingness to pay estimates indicate that the positive values for food safety are frequently greater than the negative values placed on prohibited food production methods. Similarly, UK country of origin was highly valued but organic production was less valued. The implications of these results and the use of stated preference estimates in economic modelling underpinning trade negotiations are discussed.