Jennifer Ifft is a PhD Candidate in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at the University of California Berkeley. She grew up in central Illinois, where her family still operates a grain and hog farm. As an undergraduate, she studied in the Agricultural and Consumer Economics Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before attending the University of Cambridge for an MPhil in Land Economy, she spent a summer working with the Value Project, an agricultural extension initiative at UIUC. She has worked for the World Bank on agricultural development projects in East Asia, with a focus on the livestock sector. During her PhD studies, she designed and implemented field experiments to measure demand for free range poultry certification in urban areas of Viet Nam as a part of DFID and FAO research and policy advisory work on pro-poor avian influenza risk reduction strategies. She has also studied how small scale poultry producers change their production practices after avian influenza outbreaks and analyzed poultry market and supply chain structure in Viet Nam. Her recent work with the Economic Research Service has involved analyzing different factors influencing farmland values.

Abstract: This paper presents results of a field experiment I designed and implemented to assess willingness to pay for safely produced free range chicken in Ha Noi, the capital of Viet Nam. Improved safety of chicken production and trading is suggested as an important component of avian influenza control strategy, which aims to address the direct costs of avian influenza as well as the global public health externality. However consumer demand for safer free range chicken is unknown. Products that have credible food safety claims are not common in the traditional markets where the majority of free range chicken is purchased. Valuing charactersitics of products sold in informal markets is a major challenge that my experiment overcomes. As part of the experiment, I provided several vendors from these markets with branded, safety-labeled free range chicken and consumers were given coupons that enabled them to choose between thischicken and regular unbranded free range chicken. Results indicate consumers will pay at least $0.50, or a 10-15 percent premium, per chicken purchase for safety labeling which emphasizes safe production, processing and transport conditions. Safety labeling hence can play a role in improving policies related to livestock disease and public health.