Critical Evaluation for Adoption of Food Safety Systems in the Turkish Dairy and Meat Processing Businesses

The adoption of food safety systems (FSSs) is of major significance in the food industry، and that approach is especially of more promience in dairy and meat processing firms. In this study the aim was to introduce the factors affecting the probability of adoption of FSSs in the dairy and the meat processing plants in Aydin، western Turkey. It was observed that ten out of twenty-eight dairy businesses had implemented one or more FSSs، and eight out of twenty-six meat processing firms had also implemented one or more of the FSSs. In total، thirty-six enterprises had not adopted any food safety system intended for safe food production، eighteen of which were involved in dairy and eighteen in meat processings. Binomial logistic regression model was employed throughout the study. The results indicated that plant characteristics and activities play a major role in determining the relative importance of various incentives in adopting food safety practices. The results also indicated that the larger business plants benefitted from a greater marginal probability of being adopters of FSSs as compared with the other business properties. The businesses that had employed ten to fourteen، fifteen to twenty، or more than twenty employees along with a food engineer and/or a veterinarian as a permanent employee were more likely to adopt FSSs than firms that were employers of fewer staff. Moreover the study indicated that care of hand disinfection had a positive and statistically significant relationship with the decision of any firm to adopt FSSs. On the other hand، the positive and significant impacts of such other factors as knowledge of risk resources، presence of wastes، sufficient air ventilation، and also firm specialties like fewer ordinary employees، as well as the type of business sector (dairy or meat firms) did not prove possible to be verified.