Emergency diseases

Contents | Introduction | Economic impact | Social issues | Environmental issues | Animal welfare issues | Professional and personal issues | References

Return to Exotic Diseases Home.

Economic impact

A critical element in why such diseases are important is the costs that accrue due to its presence in a population of animals. These costs are associated with reduced or loss of production, with mortalities, with lower growth rates and consequential delay in production, and with costs of intervention to effect recovery (treatment costs) or prevention (vaccination and husbandry costs).

Costs of disease control

In the event of a disease outbreak, these can be massive. For example the recent outbreak of FMD in the UK cost about £3.1 billion. The majority of the costs for surveillance, slaughter, decontamination and compensation to agriculture were met by the UK Government (Thompson et al., 2002). If vaccination is incorporated into the emergency control program, the cost structure may change, but it cannot be accurately predicted whether vaccination would reduce or increase costs of control.

Costs of the loss of production

The estimated cost of loss of production for the FMD UK outbreak was estimated at £355 million, which represents about 20% of the estimated total income from farming in 2001 (Thompson et al., 2002). Modelling for an outbreak in Australia has estimated that gross domestic product in Australia would fall by an estimated 0.6% (AUS$3.5 billion), employment by 0.8%, and a depreciation of 3% would be recorded in the exchange rate in the first year (Garner et al., 2002).

Costs of loss of markets

Loss of markets can result from reduced consumer confidence: this loss of confidence might be due to an actual food safety hazard from animal products (for example, BSE and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), concern about the quality of food during a disease emergency, or a public misconception of an unreal risk from this food. Market loss can also occur if there is not enough product in supply, due to the control of the disease. People either stop buying the product altogether, or purchase alternatives. This market loss may be more enduring and was observed during and after the outbreak of BSE in the UK well before any evidence emerged of the link between BSE and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Finally, export markets are also lost as quarantine barriers are raised to product from affected areas. This loss may be enduring as buyers may source their product from other countries and may not come back to the local market. In addition, restrictions from one region may have an effect on exports from the whole of the country.

Costs associated with loss of general economic activity

These are harder to quantify. Some economic areas (eg tourism) are easily quantifiable, some areas that may be affected may not be recognised until the outbreak has occurred. The subtle economic effects on social activity may be manifest at local or national levels and this has been observed in the current SARS outbreak with conferences and sporting events being curtailed by reduced numbers of participants attending, or the activity being cancelled altogether.

Costs associated with genetic loss

Years of careful breeding, or investment in modern reproductive technologies such as embryo transfer, genetic manipulation and cloning, will be lost when core stock die from the disease or killed as part of disease control. Some of these costs can be measured, but the intrinsic value that may be applied to years of careful breeding may never be determined. Likewise, the cost of lost genetic opportunity can never be evaluated.

Social issues