Animal health economics where have we come from and where do we go next?
2007
Rushton, J. | Viscarra, R. | Otte, J. | McLeod, A. | Taylor, N.
The early initiatives on animal disease control measures were stimulated and justified by unacceptable losses of animals from rinderpest and foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Europe in the nineteenth century. In the 1960s, an increasingly large and ambitious veterinary profession turned to cost-benefit analysis methods in order to justify previous and proposed animal disease campaigns that supported livestock producers using more intensive production systems. These economic assessment methods were in the process of being developed and refined, and were increasingly important in the assessment of public investments. Some economists saw the use of cost-benefit analysis as simply an add-on to the technical aspects of animal disease control, and requested more rigorous economics when looking at the subject of animal health. This was the beginning of an ongoing debate on animal health economics that has developed into a number of different strands of thought. The paper reviews the development of animal health economics and the question whether there are new issues and opportunities that the subject needs to address. In this way it provides information on where animal health economics has come from and where it should be going next.
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