Enhancing Food Safety and Productivity: Technology Use in the Canadian Food Processing Industry - ARCHIVED

This paper examines the factors contributing to the adoption of advanced technologies in the Canadian food-processing sector. The numbers of technologies used by a plant is found to be highly correlated with expected gains in firm performance. The benefits of enhanced food safety and quality, as well as productivity improvements, are closely associated with technology use. Impediments that negatively affect technology use include software costs, problems with external financing, lack of cash flow for financing, and internal management problems. Even after accounting for the different benefits and costs associated with technology adoption, the numbers of advanced technologies that are adopted are found to be greater in larger plants, in foreign-controlled plants, in plants that engage in both primary and secondary processing, and in the dairy, fruit and vegetable and "other" food product industries.