BASIC FRAMEWORK FOR THE ECONOMIC-EVALUATION OF ANIMAL HEALTH CONTROL PROGRAMS

The further integration of international markets means that co-ordinat ed policies against contagious animal infections have become increasin gly important, and stricter demands for control and eradication should be expected in the future. To meet these demands, it would be desirab le to create a computer simulation environment in which 'what if?' sce narios could be performed, in order to explore the epidemiological and economic effects of various infections and control strategies. The au thors propose a flexible economic framework and illustrate this framew ork with an example. The framework has four elements: changes in the p ercentage of infectious herds, changes in product quantities, changes in product prices and economic integration. Each element is specifical ly defined and has its own input and output data, depending on the con trol strategy under consideration.In an illustration of the framework, probability distributions of the different control strategies are com pared and the optimal strategy is chosen, according to the attitude of the decision-maker towards risk. Such a framework can be considered a s a new standardised approach for comparing and selecting animal healt h control strategies, by integrating technical and economic data and p rinciples.