Food safety training and rating programs for informal processed food markets in Northern Ghana

The project has a producer intervention and consumer intervention. The producer intervention has three components: training, testing, and rating. Producers will be invited to attend a training on using safe groundnuts to produce kulikuli. Upon completion of training they will receive a prominent sign to post at their point of sale stating they have completed the safe kulikuli production training. Testing will occur every two weeks using a sample purchased by a mystery shopper. Based on the test results, the producer will earn a rating, which they can post on their sign in a designated spot. The consumer training will involve telling nearby consumers about aflatoxin, the high risk of aflatoxin in kulikuli, how to find and identify producers trained on aflatoxin prevention, and how to interpret the rating system to make sure the producer has recently received a satisfactory rating.

Producer intervention

The producer intervention has three components: training, testing, and rating.

Training
Current and former University for Development Studies students will train groups of selected producers, cluster by cluster, in meeting areas in or near each cluster. Training will cover what aflatoxin is, what risks it poses, and how to reduce the risk of aflatoxin contamination in kulikuli. Specifically, producers will be trained on the importance of using high quality groundnut stock and sorting out nuts that show morphological traits correlated with aflatoxin contamination. These include discoloration, mold, shriveling, and insect damage. Producers will be given photo charts showing these traits to take home with them. To get experience, producers will be asked to sort a sample of groundnuts and receive feedback from trainers. Producers will be trained on discarding sorted nuts so they do not re-enter the food supply. The study team will offer to purchase out-sorted nuts at the prevailing market price for the lowest quality nuts (which can be found in local markets) for safe disposal.

At the conclusion of the training, producers will be given a sign saying that they have completed a training on producing safe kulikuli. The sign will have a place to display a color-coded rating card that can be changed from testing cycle to testing cycle.

As part of the program, producers will have their kulikuli tested and rated for quality on a regular basis (see below). They will be trained on how to communicate their knowledge of aflatoxin and quality credential to better market their kulikuli. Training will take a total of 3-4 hours per group, and participating producers will be compensated XXX GhC and provided snacks and drinks.

Testing
Two weeks after training we will collect kulikuli samples from producers for aflatoxin testing. This should be enough time for producers to go through their existing groundnut stock and acquire new stock. As part of training producers will be told that samples will be collected occasionally, but not exactly when or by who. In training we tell producers that we may also purchase kulikulikim or groundnut paste (if they have these for sale) for testing so they do not divert bad nuts to these products. Samples will tested in the Opoku Lab at the University for Development Studies by trained technicians. In addition to being used to determine whether a producer is certified, test results will be used as outcome data for the study (see below).

Rating
We will have three ratings for kulikil: safest (green), safer than the majority (yellow), and not safer than the majority (orange). The aflatoxin level to reach each rating will depend on prevailing aflatoxin levels in the entire sample. The green level can either be attained by being below 10 PPB, the Ghanaian standard for groundnuts, or by being below 25th percentile for aflatoxin content among untreated producers.\footnote{The official threshold for whole groundnuts is 10 PPB, whereas the threshold for groundnut snacks is 4 PPB. Given the levels for aflatoxin in Ghanaian groundnuts, and the fact that kulikuli is made essentially entirely of groundnuts, 4 PPB does not seem reasonable to attain. It is also important to note that there is little to no aflatoxin testing in formal or informal domestic food markets in Ghana making these thresholds largely irrelevant.} The yellow rating will be given to kulikuli that is between the 25th and 50th percentile (or and not below 10 PPB). The orange rating will be given to all other producers.

We will conduct three additional tests every two weeks after the initial test. We will inform each producer of their result, and if their rating changes from the previous test, we will go to their storefront (unannounced) and swap rating cards. Regardless of their rating they will be able to keep the sign stating that they completed the training.

Consumer intervention}
Coinciding with the initial testing and rating cycle, the study team will launch a consumer information campaign in treatment market clusters only. To select which consumers will receive information we will use satellite data to identify homes. From the roster of homes we will randomly select 20 homes per cluster for enumerators to target. For multi-household buildings (apartment buildings, compounds), enumerators will target the first household they can find. If a selected household does not consume kulikuli it will be replaced with others from the list.

Pairs of trainers will go to the selected households to inform consumers about the risks of aflatoxin in kulikuli, the program to train some producers to make safer kulikuli, and the measures these producers are taking to reduce aflatoxin risk. Enumerators will show consumers the photo charts trained producers use to sort out potentially dangerous nuts, a photo of the signs trained producers received, and the three color coded rating cards that should be displayed on these signs. Trainers will be free to provide the same information to anyone who asks they what they are talking to people about, as the idea is to spread the information throughout the entire market cluster.

2022-08-08

2022-12-01

Producer outcomes: aflatoxin awareness, time spent sorting bad nuts out, quantity of bad nuts sorted out, quantity of kulikuli produced, quantity of kulikuli sold, aflatoxin levels in kulikuli.

Consumer outcomes: Criteria for selecting kulikuli, aflatoxin/food safety knowledge, knowledge of training and rating program

See pre-analysis plan for more details.

Producer outcomes: Source of groundnut stock, price paid for groundnut stock, price of kulikuli sold, quantity of kulikuli consumed at home.
Consumer outcomes: Perceives there to be a quality difference between vendors, quantity of kulikuli purchased, price paid, youngest kulikuli consumer in household

See pre-analysis plan for more details.

Producers
First, we will randomize our interventions at the market cluster level. Treatment clusters will receive both the producer and consumer intervention, and control clusters will receive no intervention whatsoever.

Next, we will randomize recruitment into the producer intervention within clusters. In treated market clusters, we will randomly select half of the producers to invite to the training, testing, and certification program. The other half will be invited at the end of the study. This will allow us to test for effects on certified and non-certified producers, who may be affected through information spillovers, shifts in consumer preferences, or changing prices. Furthermore, offering these producers training and certification later will allow us to measure demand for certification not directly incited by the research team (see below) and reduce the potential of harming initially non-certified producers or causing conflict between producers. In control clusters, we will randomly select half of the producers to be in the study so that we have three equally sized treatment arms: 240 treated producers, 240 untreated producers in treated market clusters, and 240 control producers.

We will stratify the randomization across market clusters based on geography and the number of producers in the cluster. We believe geography will be the best determinant of where a producer sources their groundnuts, which is they factor we believe will be most highly correlated with aflatoxin levels. Stratifying based on the number of producers will help us get the same number of producers in the three treatment arms. Because we will only stratify on these variables, we can assign treatment before collecting baseline data, which has two advantages. First, it allows us to construct a sample with an average of 12 producers in treatment market clusters (half of whom will be treated) and an average of six producers in control clusters. Second, it makes it possible to invite (treatment) producers to training upon completion of the baseline survey.

Consumers
Coinciding with producer training, we will implement the consumer intervention in all treated market clusters. This means we will estimate the combined effect of a producer and consumer intervention, which we believe is the most likely way a program like this would be implemented in practice. This design does not allow us to estimate the effects of the producer intervention alone, or to estimate the \emph{additional} effect of the consumer intervention when the produce intervention is in place. However, it gives us maximum power to estimate the (combined) treatment effect we are most interested in.

Randomization done in office by a computer.

Market cluster (neighborhood) first, then individual vendors within treated market clusters.

Yes

80 market clusters.

720 kulikuli producers, 1440 kulikuli consumers.

40 market clusters per treatment arm. 240 producers per treatment arm. 480 consumers per treatment arm.

Producer outcomes (other than aflatoxin): 0.21 standard deviations. Aflatoxin: 0.25 standard deviations (66% decrease). Consumer outcomes: 0.19 standard deviations.