The Governance of Livestock Disease

Project Status: Completed
Type of Project: Research Project
Principal Investigator: Professor Graham Medley, University of Warwick (Email)

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Publications, Data and Other Outputs
Policy and Practice Note 16
Policy and Practice Note 19
Policy and Practice Note 34
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Objectives

This project will be considering a range of issues around animal disease: how is policy decided? who should decide whether a disease should be controlled by elimination and how should they make that decision? for a given level of regulation, to what extent is disease controlled? who should decide the target level to which any disease should be controlled?

Infectious diseases of livestock are of concern because of productivity losses (sick animals produce less meat and milk) and welfare (sick animals suffer). Consumer demand can be changed by public perceptions of disease, and international trade is greatly influenced by disease. The 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic and the on-going bovine tuberculosis epidemic illustrate both sets of concerns. Current policies of disease control are not perfect, they only consider one disease at a time, and they can create conflict and inconsistencies.

There are a number of factors already known to influence the questions outlined above that might be broken down into different categories.

The epidemiological and biological: do we know what causes the disease? Can it be diagnosed accurately? How is it transmitted? How can it be controlled most effectively?
The economic: is the saving of productivity worth the intervention? Will the increased productivity result in more profit for farmers or more profit for retailers? Are there areas in which the disease is more likely to occur or be more profitable to control? What are the competing forces operating on farmers for their land (especially the environment)?

The political: is there an international trade barrier? Is the disease of high public profile? How is decision making within Government influenced by groups such as vets and animal protection lobby?

The legal: what laws are available for Government to control the disease? How should the policy and legal framework be crafted so that farmers and the public perceive it as effective and necessary? How is liability for the costs of the disease and risks associated with disease control allocated? How does the risk of transmissible disease affect land ownership and land use?

There are many groups involved: farmers, public (consumers), retailers (supermarkets), elected representatives (MPs and National Farmers’ Union), veterinarians, European Union and Government officials (Defra and State Veterinary Service). We analyse how these groups interact, decisions get made and policy enacted. To get a holistic understanding and put processes in their proper context, we need to include the different disciplines simultaneously (biology, economics, law and politics). We will interview individuals to develop a network model of the interactions.

The project will concentrate on six diseases of cattle found in the UK. We already have considerable information, and we will collect more data on how farmers make decisions that influence these diseases. We will construct computer models that include the important processes to seek better ways of controlling them.

The proposal is different from previous research in two important respects. First, we consider different infections at the same time. Virtually all research and current policy only considers one disease at a time; despite it being known that imposing regulations aimed at one disease has knock-on effects on other diseases. But it has been considered just too difficult to think of diseases simultaneously, and the necessary data and knowledge have not existed previously. Secondly, we will consider all the different organisational levels at the same time. Previous research has largely concentrated on different aspects - individual animals or groupings of animals (epidemiology), farms (economics), international trade (politics), but each level influences and is influenced by all the others.