Process Based: as a benefit of HACCP means that any problem affecting the food products would be detected during the processing stage since it is unlikely to do 100% sampling

and analysis of finished products to achieve food safety objectives.

Where developing countries and/or SMEs understand that the benefit of implementing HACCP outweighs the costs of removing the HACCP barriers on the businesses, they will voluntarily decide to remove those barriers to start the implementation of HACCP (Wallace, Sperber et al., 2011; Unnevehr, 2000). The cost of implementing HACCP is usually staff time and energy because most of the financial costs come at the initial stage and is one time, thus a rational investment for SMEs and LDCs (Kane, 2011; Worsfold, 2005; Kane and Taylor, 2003).

It can be argued that the time, energy and money for removing HACCP barrier are investments that yield maximum returns as benefits for implementing HACCP by businesses, and therefore cost effective. Similarly, if the barriers are seem to be insuperable, that means they are not relevant to produce the desired benefits. It can also be argued that understanding and awareness of barriers by the businesses are paramount for their removal; otherwise, the barriers become impassable, even where the benefits for removing those barriers are greater (Bas, Yo’Ksel, et al., 2007).

It can also be argued that even if the benefits outweigh the barriers, the decision to remove the HACCP barriers is mostly the decision of the businesses concerned since they are responsible for the safety and overall quality assurance of their food products, despite that regulatory authorities and enforcement officers may have the mandate to sanction the effective implementation of HACCP. Therefore, in HACCP intervention it is paramount to weigh the barriers and benefits and determine if the benefits outweigh the barriers or if those benefits are relevant to the food safety requirements of that business.

Perhaps, one of the major challenges for the SMEs especially in LDCs is that, the barriers of HACCP are unclear, taking into consideration the various negative environmental

factors, lack of knowledge, skills, expertise, awareness and motivation, but the benefits are many and easily discernable. In developed countries, the larger food businesses have several merits for

implementing HACCP such as customer demands due to pressure from existing consumer advocacy groups, mandatory compliance to public food safety standards, and the requirements for private standards, but are not as many of the benefits for LDCs that currently have many areas to exploit following successful implementation of HACCP. The author argues that several merits of HACCP in LDCs are not extant in developed countries because their larger businesses don’t have clear barriers such as lack of consumer advocacy groups, lack of public food safety standards, private standards, to list but a few.

This study looks at the fishery businesses in a LDC that have not adopted and implemented a HACCP system. However, they are not clearly familiar with barrier versus the benefit equation; but they should be able to perceive the barriers that have impeded their compliance with HACCP and types of HACCP benefits and their relative importance if given the right opportunities such as the methodology of this study. By doing so, one could equate these barriers versus the relative benefits and compare them with those benefits suggested by international HACCP regulators. Resultantly, the regulatory, enforcement and businesses would be in a vantage position to reflect on whether the benefits outweigh the barriers. This will figure out the decision of the local fishery businesses to voluntarily adopt HACCP or the adoption and implementation follow the sanction by the national regulatory and enforcement officers. By applying the cost and benefits analysis model proposed by Henson, (2004) the fishery businesses in Sierra Leone will attempt to make a decision on the removal of HACCP barriers to adopt HACCP through the model given below in Figure 2, (Griffith, 2006).

Figure 2: Barriers and Benefits Decision Model to adopt HACCP in fishery businesses in Sierra Leone ( Adapted from Henson, 2004, for this Study)

The fishery businesses now face the choice of removing the barriers to adopt HACCP to achieve the HACCP benefits or not. Nevertheless, such decision by the fishery businesses depends largely on their awareness and acknowledgement of the barriers and the relative benefits of adopting the HACCP system. Certainly, the awareness and acknowledgement of barriers and their relative benefits seem to be unclear for most of the SMEs in LDCs. Moreover, it seems unlikely for the SMEs in LDCs to assess the significance of benefits of HACCP if they are not aware of the HACCP barriers. This study suggests that the awareness and acknowledgement of HACCP barriers by regulators and businesses are more likely enhanced if the regulators and businesses are given opportunities to give their perceptions and feelings about the HACCP barriers.

The third objective of this study is to compare the benefits of HACCP as suggested by international regulators against those benefits perceived in Sierra Leone, but the first priority is the identification of the barriers. The reason is that it is more difficult to identify the benefits of HACCP other than regulatory compliance, if the barriers are not known and acknowledged by those adopting or planning to adopt the HACCP system (Kane, 2011). Perhaps this is why SMEs

Adoption of HACCP in Fishery Businesses

Technical Barriers of HACCP Relative Benefits of HACCP Net Technical Barriers of HACCP

HACCP Not Adopted by Fishery Businesses

HACCP Adopted by Fishery Businesses Net Relative Benefits of HACCP

especially those in the LDCs are unable to adopt HACCP, because they still lack the knowledge about the barriers and benefit calculation and consequently, are unwilling to go ahead with the adoption.

Nevertheless, the author argues that the involvement of those involve in food safety infrastructure in the identification of HACCP barriers provides a realistic solution of the difficulty of calculating the merits and demerits of making decisions about adopting HACCP where the barriers and benefits of HACCP are unknown. With this notion one can suggest that the decision by the SMEs in LDCs not to adopt HACCP system cannot be squarely based on lack of willingness, but perhaps it could be rational to say that it is due to lack of knowledge and understanding of the barriers and benefits of HACCP.

Lack of knowledge and understanding of barriers especially among the LDCs have been used as protectionist tools that put developed countries into vantage position to justify ban on export of food products from LDCs, and this can be considered as a trade discrimination (Anders and Caswell, 2009). For example, fishery products from Sierra Leone are currently banned to enter developed markets because lack of HACCP certification is making HACCP to serve as barrier instead of benefit to the country. However, it can be argued that the word discrimination holds where enforcement is more rigorous for products from third countries than the domestic counterpart (Anders and Caswell, 2009). This can be considered as measure contrary to the Agreement on the application of SPS Agreement under the WTO. Nonetheless, if countries take less pessimistic view of the role of food safety standards as an opportunity to access developed markets and increase their trade opportunities, they could be motivated to develop and implement appropriate standards to remove the barrier. This means that benefits for implementing appropriate standards now outweigh the idea of trade discrimination from imposing stricter standard. As a result one can assume that benefit of standard as a trade catalyst outweighs the notion of standard as a barrier (Anders and Caswell, 2009). This means that in figure 2, above, the weight of benefit will outweigh the weight of barrier, thus benefit becomes a catalyst to provide various incentives for LDCs to develop state-of-the-art food safety infrastructure to be become export- oriented and improve public health domestically.

Barriers may act to impede the adoption and implementation of HACCP and subsequently, affect trade flows by imposing export bans and heavy cost of compliance, especially in developing countries (Jaffee and Henson, 2004; World Bank, 2005). In this case, the weight of barriers outweighs the weight of benefits in figure 2, above. There are also potential benefits arising from the implementation of HACCP. Certain countries may be able to use HACCP standards to their competitive advantage and increase market access (Jaffee and Henson, 2004; World Bank, 2005). The chances for the adoption and implementation of HACCP are higher by closing the gaps between barriers and benefits causing more benefits of implementing HACCP than the barriers. According to Jaffee and Henson, 2004, the comparison between the impact of barrier and benefit is more complex in reality. Therefore, this requires in-depth analysis of the growing markets to understand how more benefits of HACCP encourages implementation of HACCP and more barriers discourages the implementation of HACC in developing countries.