This document discusses food safety standards and labels in Thailand. It finds that Thai consumers are willing to pay a premium for fresh produce labeled with certain food safety certifications, particularly the "Q mark" label issued by the Thai government. Survey results showed the highest willingness-to-pay for Chinese cabbage labeled with the Q mark combined with additional private brand labels. The study concludes food safety labeling policies should continue to be supported in Thailand to improve food safety and allow Thai products to remain competitive in international markets.

1. INTRODUCTION
 Food safety is usually considered as a basic right for all consumers therefore, it is
controlled and regulated by governments to establish laws, regulations and standards
in order to set the baseline level of food safety.
 Food safety standards and labels are one of the tools used by several governments and
firms to cope with food safety issues in the supply chain.
 In emerging markets are facing a transformation period to become more market
oriented, mostly due to external forces (i.e. export markets),and to a lesser extent
because of changing domestic demand.
 Thailand is a big exporter of food and agricultural products to developed markets, and
Thai exporters have already adopted food safety standards and labels .

2.  in 2005, they introduced a voluntary food safety label named ‘‘Q mark” issued by The
National Bureau of Agricultural Commodities and Food Standards, ACFS (ACFS, 2011)
 The Q mark became the dominant food safety label, especially for fresh produce in
Thai markets other labels and brands linked to improved food safety standards from
private sectors have been introduced into domestic Thai markets.
 In recent years, Thai consumers could also find a claimed label ‘Safe Produce” which
is a producer’s/vendor’s own-label claiming that the product is safe without
implementing any independently controlled food safety standards.

3. Material and methods
Selection of choice attributes and levels
 because most fresh produce sold at the market is without packaging and label.

4. SURVEY PROCEDURE
 sampling according to the shopping outlets and convenience sampling methods were
adopted to reach the target number of respondents (350).57% of the respondents (200
persons) were recruited at fresh-food markets and the rest (150 persons) were
recruited at supermarkets because Thai consumers still buy fresh vegetables mainly
from fresh-food markets.
 The acceptance rate was around 20% which is reasonable.
 Each considered attribute were presented by using pictures and clear labelling to aid
respondents’ understanding.
 Only 345 out of 350 respondents complete all the questions, including socio-
demographics and consumption habits; therefore, the estimated results of the models
are based on data from these respondents.

5. Consumers’ willingness-to-pay(WTP)

6. RESULTS
Willingness-to-pay for food safety labelling on Chinese cabbage
 The estimated mean of consumer WTP and 95% confidence intervals for the attributes in
the model.
 The WTP we are calculating here is the maximum premium price that consumers are
willing to pay for labelled cabbage in comparison to cabbage without information, at 50
baht/kg and harvested on the same day of purchase.
 Results from the model indicated that WTP values are rather This means that products with
Q mark, Royal Project & Q mark and Doctor’s Vegetables & Q mark are strongly preferred
and would certainly be at a premium in the market compared to cabbage without
information.
 The WTP estimations for the three food safety labelling options look quite similar. Claimed
‘‘Safe Produce” also achieved a premium price, but lower than the others.

7. Discussion and conclusions
 The results from this study show that the Thai consumers were have high WTP for food
safety labels.
 In Thailand, Lippe et al. (2010) found a 91 percent premium for chemicals-free cabbage.
 A high WTP means that consumers assigns a high value to safer food and that the current
basic level of food safety in the market might not be able to satisfy this consumer need.
 The food safety label policy should be supported and continued in order to improve the
‘‘safe food” market.
 An important limitation of this study is that, to be more realistic, we chose to put brand &
label attributes together with the Q mark; this choice has the drawback that with this
design we cannot separate the effect of private brands (Royal Project and Doctor’s
Vegetables) from the effect of certification labels (Q mark).

8.  In conclusion, enhanced food safety is highly desirable for society and
food with a safety label is beneficial for consumers in an emerging
market like Thailand.
 The strategy of gradually introducing standards and labels seems
suitable for emerging markets.
 This would be necessary in the case of Thailand in the light of its
strategy of positioning itself as ‘‘Thai Cuisine to the World” and to
staying competitive in the ASEAN markets in view of the ASEAN
Economic Community.

9. THANK YOU