ERS and Collaborators Model Foot-and-Mouth Disease
Outbreaks
Kenneth
H. Mathews, Jr.
Maintaining the competitiveness
of U.S. livestock and poultry in domestic and international
markets requires addressing the challenges and anticipating
the disruptions of disease threats. Despite some
successes in eradicating livestock diseases (contagious
bovine pleuropneumonia, 1892; foot-and-mouth disease
(FMD), 1929; screwworms, 1959; hog cholera, 1978),
the United States finds itself continuously challenged
by known and newly emerging threats, both foreign
and endemic. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE,
or mad cow disease) is one disease that has recently
been targeted by U.S. prevention and mitigation
systems.
Among the tools in the ongoing
battle against livestock diseases are models that
simulate disease outbreaks and their economic effects.
These models help measure the economic impacts of
alternative control strategies. A new modeling tool
integrates epidemiological simulations from a North
American Animal Disease-Spread Model (NAADSM) developed
by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service with an economic model developed at Purdue
with ERS collaboration. This integrated framework
can be used to assess effects of a disease outbreak
and subsequent mitigation efforts on livestock supply,
demand, and trade for up to 20 calendar quarters.
A purely hypothetical outbreak
of FMD in small Midwest hog operations was simulated
to assess the effect of mitigation strategies and
impacts of export embargoes for beef, beef cattle,
hogs, and pork. Even though few animals had to be
destroyed in the simulation, many agricultural sectors
suffered losses. However, domestic meat supplies
increased, lowering prices for domestic consumers.
Total losses to livestock-related enterprises from
the hypothetical FMD episode ranged between $2.8
billion and $4.1 billion, depending on disease intensity,
the outbreak’s duration, and the response
scenario. In 2007, losses in that range would have
represented 2 to 3 percent of forecast livestock
cash receipts. In the simulations, the swine and
pork sectors recovered soon after export restrictions
ended, but beef and cattle effects lingered due
to the longer cattle production cycle. Production
of all commodities returned to pre-disease levels
in less than 2 years.
The framework is flexible and
can be applied to many livestock diseases. It allows
the integrated modeling of both economic effects
and disease-spread effects from an outbreak; it
can assess the effects of a disease outbreak on
major agricultural sectors, along vertical market
chains, from production to consumption; and it can
project the impacts of the disease outbreak, by
quarter, for 5 years.
|
This
finding is drawn from . . . |
| Economic
Impacts of Foreign Animal Disease,
by Philip L. Paarlberg, Ann Hillberg Seitzinger,
John G. Lee, and Kenneth H. Mathews, Jr.,
ERR-57, USDA, Economic Research Service, May
2008. |
|
Download PDF version