Consumer willingness to pay for shelf life of high-temperature, short-time-pasteurized fluid milk: Implications for smart labeling and food waste reduction.

Food waste in the United States was valued at $285 billion in 2019, representing 70% of all food surplus; dairy and eggs alone represented 15.90% of food surplus. Milk is the fifth most consumed beverage in the United States, and therefore its contribution to food waste has significant economic and environmental ramifications. Smart labels that provide precise spoilage information for fluid milk may help reduce food waste in fluid milk, but it is unclear if consumers will accept or pay for this novel technology. This paper examines consumer preferences for high temperature, short time pasteurized fluid milk shelf life and smart date labels and tests how information about the environmental impact of fluid milk food waste affects consumers' acceptance and willingness to pay. We used a choice-based conjoint study administered in an online survey, along with a between-subject experiment to measure preferences under different information treatments about the environmental impact of food waste. Our results suggest that consumers' valuations of extended shelf life and an ecolabel is positive; however, using the smart label creates disutility for consumers, thereby hindering acceptance of new labeling technology that may facilitate food waste reduction in the milk industry. These findings imply that retailers should find alternative means to enhance the communication of precise shelf life information and its role in reducing food waste.

Economic and environmental analysis of processing plant interventions to reduce fluid milk waste.

With the increased awareness about the economic and environmental impact of food waste, many interventions along food supply chains have been proposed to mitigate food waste. Even though interventions used to target food waste usually revolve around logistics and operations management, we highlight a unique solution to address this issue, specifically for fluid milk. We target the intrinsic quality of fluid milk by evaluating interventions that will extend the product shelf life. We used data from a previous fluid milk spoilage simulation model, collected price and product information from retail stores, conducted an expert elicitation, and used hedonic price regressions to determine the private and social gains to the dairy processing plant when implementing 5 different interventions to extend shelf life. Our data suggest that the value of each additional day of shelf life is approximately $0.03 and indicate that increasing periodic equipment cleaning is the most cost-effective strategy for processing plants to achieve fluid milk shelf-life improvements, both from a firm's economic standpoint and from an environmental standpoint. Importantly, the approaches reported here will be valuable to help individual firms to generate customized facility and firm specific assessments that identify the most appropriate strategies for extending the shelf life of different dairy products.

Consumer perceptions of QR code technology for enhanced fluid milk shelf-life information provision in a retail setting.

There is increasing awareness of the impact of food waste and the large role best-by or sell-by dates play in consumer food waste. To address this issue, predictive models have been developed that can not only provide more accurate best-by dates for fluid milk but could also be used to dynamically predict shelf-life (e.g., based on distribution data such as storage temperatures) and adjust prices for products closer to the end of shelf-life. However, limited information is available on strategies to communicate this type of information to consumers. Here we assessed the consumer acceptance of (1) quick response (QR) code technology to communicate product shelf-life and (2) shelf-life dependent pricing based on QR codes by offering both half-gallon fluid milk with traditional printed best-by dates and identical products with QR codes to convey best-by dates over an 8-wk time period in a retail setting. Overall, 62% of half-gallon containers sold over this time frame featured QR codes and 48% of QR code scans were linked to subsequent sales, suggesting the possibility of substantial consumer acceptance of novel technologies to display and communicate best-by dates. Preliminary data based on a small number of sales also showed that consumers did purchase QR code-labeled products offered at a reduced price due to limited remaining shelf-life. Our data suggest that at least some consumer segments would adopt QR code-based shelf-life labels, which presents an opportunity to better manage and communicate "best-by" dates and use dynamic pricing strategies to reduce food waste that occurs when an end-of-shelf-life product is either not sold or is discarded by consumers. Overall, QR codes represent a strategic opportunity for the dairy industry to achieve greater sustainability and to foster stronger connections with customers through enhanced provision of information that highlights sustainability practices implemented across the whole supply chain.

Influenza Transmission in Preschools: Modulation by contact landscapes and interventions.

Epidemiologic data suggest that schools and daycare facilities likely play a major role in the dissemination of influenza. Pathogen transmission within such small, inhomogenously mixed populations is difficult to model using traditional approaches. We developed simulation based mathematical tool to investigate the effects of social contact networks on pathogen dissemination in a setting analogous to a daycare center or grade school. Here we show that interventions that decrease mixing within child care facilities, including limiting the size of social clusters, reducing the contact frequency between social clusters, and eliminating large gatherings, could diminish pathogen dissemination. Moreover, these measures may amplify the effectiveness of vaccination or antiviral prophylaxis, even if the vaccine is not uniformly effective or antiviral compliance is incomplete. Similar considerations should apply to other small, imperfectly mixed populations, such as offices and schools.