Economic Analysis of Increasing Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccination Frequency: The Case of the Biannual Mass Vaccination Strategy.

Biannual mass vaccination is a routinely applied foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) control strategy in Turkey. However, because biannual mass vaccination may leave significant immunity gaps, this strategy may cause economic losses because of possible FMD infections. In high-risk areas-such as border cities, it was suggested by the government to increase the vaccination intervals in order to decrease the FMD infection risk. This study analyses and compares the economic effects of a biannual mass vaccination regime and vaccination every 4 months as an alternative strategy in border cities by using partial budgeting approach. Biannual mass vaccination was used as a baseline scenario. Data on the impact of FMD on animal health and production parameters for 2018 were obtained from the OIE-WAHIS system and complemented by literature data and expert opinion. In the partial budgeting model, weight loss was considered as a major loss of income because majority of the farming systems are based on cattle fattening in the border cities of Turkey. Results revealed that the net economic impact, which is the benefit that exceeds the losses and costs of increasing the frequency of vaccination, is 76.4 TL ($15.9) per cattle. The sensitivity analysis showed that average body weight and weight losses when infected had more effect on net impact changes than market prices. The lower and upper FMD incidence variability resulted in 19.2 TL ($4) and 190.8 TL ($39.6) of net impact per cattle, respectively. The new FMD control strategy would make a total net economic impact of 5,274,836 TL ($1,094,250) for a population of 800,970 fattening cattle in border cities. The results of this study indicated that intense FMD control strategies may be more cost effective than the current control strategies, especially in high-risk areas. Future studies with more comprehensive epidemiological and economic data must be conducted to analyze and compare alternative FMD control strategies in Turkey.

Financial Impacts of Liver Fluke on Livestock Farms Under Climate Change-A Farm Level Assessment.

Liver fluke infection (fascioliasis) is a parasitic disease which affects the health and welfare of ruminants. It is a concern for the livestock industry and is considered as a growing threat to the industry because changing climatic conditions are projected to be more favorable to increased frequency and intensity of liver fluke outbreaks. Recent reports highlighted that the incidence and geographic range of liver fluke has increased in the UK over the last decade and estimated to increase the average risk of liver fluke in the UK due to increasing temperature and rainfall. This paper explores financial impacts of the disease with and without climate change effects on Scottish livestock farms using a farm-level economic model. The model is based on farming system analysis and uses linear programming technique to maximize farm net profit within farm resources. Farm level data from a sample of 160 Scottish livestock farms is used under a no disease baseline scenario and two disease scenarios (with and without climate change). These two disease scenarios are compared with the baseline scenario to estimate the financial impact of the disease at farm levels. The results suggest a 12% reduction in net profit on an average dairy farm compared to 6% reduction on an average beef farm under standard disease conditions. The losses increase by 2-fold on a dairy farm and 6-fold on a beef farm when climate change effects are included with disease conditions on farms. There is a large variability within farm groups with profitable farms incurring relatively lesser economic losses than non-profitable farms. There is a substantial increase in number of vulnerable farms both in dairy (+20%) and beef farms (+27%) under the disease alongside climate change conditions.

Impact of subclinical mastitis on greenhouse gas emissions intensity and profitability of dairy cows in Norway.

Impaired animal health causes both productivity and profitability losses on dairy farms, resulting in inefficient use of inputs and increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced per unit of product (i.e. emissions intensity). Here, we used subclinical mastitis as an exemplar to benchmark alternative scenarios against an economic optimum and adjusted herd structure to estimate the GHG emissions intensity associated with varying levels of disease. Five levels of somatic cell count (SCC) classes were considered namely 50,000 (i.e. SCC50), 200,000, 400,000, 600,000 and 800,000cells/mL (milliliter) of milk. The effects of varying levels of SCC on milk yield reduction and consequential milk price penalties were used in a dynamic programming (DP) model that maximizes the profit per cow, represented as expected net present value, by choosing optimal animal replacement rates. The GHG emissions intensities associated with different levels of SCC were then computed using a farm-scale model (HolosNor). The total culling rates of both primiparous (PP) and multiparous (MP) cows for the five levels of SCC scenarios estimated by the model varied from a minimum of 30.9% to a maximum of 43.7%. The expected profit was the highest for cows with SCC200 due to declining margin over feed, which influenced the DP model to cull and replace more animals and generate higher profit under this scenario compared to SCC50. The GHG emission intensities for the PP and MP cows with SCC50 were 1.01kg (kilogram) and 0.95kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per kg fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM), respectively, with the lowest emissions being achieved in SCC50. Our results show that there is a potential to reduce the farm GHG emissions intensity by 3.7% if the milk production was improved through reducing the level of SCC to 50,000cells/mL in relation to SCC level 800,000cells/mL. It was concluded that preventing and/or controlling subclinical mastitis consequently reduces the GHG emissions per unit of product on farm that results in improved profits for the farmers through reductions in milk losses, optimum culling rate and reduced feed and other variable costs. We suggest that further studies exploring the impact of a combination of diseases on emissions intensity are warranted.

Financial Vulnerability of Dairy Farms Challenged by Johne's Disease to Changes in Farm Payment Support.

Johne's disease is an endemic contagious bacterial infection of ruminants which is prevalent in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It can lower financial returns on infected farms by reducing farm productivity through output losses and control expenditures. A farm-level analysis of the economics of the disease was conducted taking account of farm variability and different disease prevalence levels. The aim was to assess the financial impacts of a livestock disease on farms and determine their financial vulnerability if farm support payments were to be removed under future policy reforms. A farm-level optimization model, ScotFarm, was used on 50 Scottish dairy farms taken from the Farm Business Survey to determine the impacts of the disease. A counterfactual comparison of five alternative "disease" scenarios with a "no-disease" scenario was carried out to evaluate economic impact of the disease. The extent of a farm's reliance on direct support payments was considered to be an indicator of their financial vulnerability. Under this definition, farms were grouped into three financial vulnerability risk categories; "low risk," "medium risk," and "high risk" farms. Results show that farms are estimated to incur a loss of 32% on average of their net profit under a standard disease prevalence level. Farms in the "low risk" and "medium risk" categories were estimated to have a lower financial impact of the disease (22 and 28% reduction on farm net profit, respectively) which, along with their lower reliance on farm direct support payments, indicate they would be more resilient to the disease under future changes in farm payment support. On the contrary, farms in the "high risk" category were estimated to have a reduction of 50% on their farm net profit. A majority of these farms (61%) in the "high risk" category move from being profitable to loss making under the standard disease scenario when farm support payments are removed. Of these, 15% do so because of the impact of the disease. These farms will be more vulnerable if changes were to be made in farm support payments under future agricultural policy reforms.

The effect of animal health compensation on 'positive' behaviours towards exotic disease reporting and implementing biosecurity: A review, a synthesis and a research agenda.

With an increasing burden on public sector budgets, increased responsibility and cost sharing mechanisms for animal diseases are being considered. To achieve this, fiscal and non-fiscal intervention policies need to be designed such that they consistently promote positive disease risk management practices by animal keepers. This paper presents a review of the available evidence towards whether and how the level and type of funding mechanism affects change within biosecurity behaviours and the frequency of disease reporting. A Nuffield Health Ladder of Interventions approach is proposed as a way to frame the debate surrounding both current compensation mechanisms and how it is expected to change behaviour. Results of the review reveal a division between economic modelling approaches, which implicitly assume a causal link between payments and positive behaviours, and socio-geographic approaches which tend to ignore the influence of compensation mechanisms on influencing behaviours. Generally, economic studies suggest less than full compensation rates will encourage positive behaviours, but the non-economic literature indicate significant variation in response to compensation reflecting heterogeneity of livestock keepers in terms of their values, goals, risk attitudes, size of operation, animal species and production chain characteristics. This may be of encouragement to Western Governments seeking to shift cost burdens as it may induce greater targeting of non-fiscal mechanisms, or suggest more novel ways to augment current compensation mechanisms to both increase responsibility sharing and reduce this cost burden. This review suggests that a range of regulatory, fiscal and nudging policies are required to achieve socially optimal results with respect to positive behaviour change. However, the lack of directly available evidence which proves these causal links may hinder progress towards this optimal mixture of choice and non-choice based interventions.

Effectiveness of simulated interventions in reducing the estimated prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 in lactating cows in dairy herds.

A transmission model developed to investigate the dynamics of Escherichia coli O157:H7 bacteria in a typical Dutch dairy herd was used to assess the effectiveness of vaccination, diet modification, probiotics (colicin) and hygienic measures as to water troughs and bedding, when they are applied single or in combination, in reducing the prevalence of infected animals. The aim was to rank interventions based on their effectiveness in reducing the baseline prevalence of infected animals in the lactating group. The baseline prevalence of the lactating group and the within-herd prevalence were estimated by the model to be 5.02% and 13.96% respectively. The results show that all four interventions, if applied to all four animal groups or only to young stock, are the most effective and will reduce the baseline prevalence by 84% to 99%. In general, combinations of hygiene (applied in all groups) and one other intervention had the highest effectiveness in reducing prevalence in the lactating group. Vaccination and diet modification show a slightly higher effectiveness than colicin and hygiene.

Simulating Escherichia coli O157:H7 transmission to assess effectiveness of interventions in Dutch dairy-beef slaughterhouses.

Beef contamination with Escherichia coli O157:H7 (VTEC) is an important food-safety issue. To investigate the effectiveness of interventions against VTEC in Dutch beef industrial slaughterhouses that slaughter 500 dairy cattle per day, a Monte Carlo simulation model was built. We examined seven carcass-antimicrobial interventions, namely: hot-water wash, lactic-acid rinse, trim, steam-vacuum, steam-pasteurization, hide-wash with ethanol and gamma irradiation, and their combinations. The estimated daily prevalence of contaminated beef-carcass quarters as the output of the model was 9.2%. Contaminated was defined as containing one or more CFU on the surface of a carcass quarter at the end of the quartering stage. Single interventions (except irradiation) could reduce the prevalence to from 6.2% to 1.7%, whereas the combination of interventions could lower it to from 1.2% to 0.1%. The most powerful intervention was irradiation, which could reduce the prevalence to <0.1%. The results of this study indicate that application of single interventions might be useful, although not sufficient. Hence, a combination of interventions along the slaughter process is the more promising approach to reduce the prevalence of contaminated beef quarters.