The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's recent announcement that milk from cloned cows is as safe to drink as that from conventionally bred cows prompted interest among farmers, food retailers, and regulators in the market impacts of the introduction of milk from clones. Because milk from cloned animals is not currently labeled in the market, we utilized a stated preference experiment to determine consumer preferences for the attribute, but also sought to determine whether the survey‐based choices were consistent with people's revealed preferences given by scanner data. Our analysis indicates that a pooled model combining stated and revealed preference data exhibits overall better out‐of‐sample prediction performance than either data set used alone. Results from the pooled model indicate that consumers are willing to pay large premiums to avoid milk from cloned cows—an amount that is over three times that for organic or rBST‐free milk. The results are used to calculate the value of a mandatory labeling program.

This research examines the economic effects of bovine respiratory disease (BRD) on backgrounding and finishing phases of cattle production. This research measures the effectiveness of using serum haptoglobin (Hp) concentration to predict BRD occurrence and the impact of multiple treatments for BRD infection on cattle performance and returns. During the backgrounding phase, 222 heifers were grouped by Hp level. After the backgrounding phase, 193 heifers were then grouped by number of BRD treatments in the finishing phase. Net returns decreased in the backgrounding phase and the combined phases as the number of BRD treatments increased. Hp concentrations had no significant effects on net returns.

We compare two widely used household scanning panels maintained by the Nielsen Company and Information Resources Inc. to a random sample of the U.S. population. Results indicate that the demographic characteristics of the random sample more closely match the Census Bureau data than the household scanning panels. We also show that after controlling for demographic differences, participants in the household scanning panels are slightly more price sensitive than participants in the random sample. The two household scanning panels yield similar results in relation to one another, which suggests that the household scanning panels may suffer from sample selection and participation biases.

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