Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF A LIVESTOCK ATTACK

AMY D. HAGERMAN, BRUCE A. MCCARL AND JIANHONG MU

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

1 INTRODUCTION

Livestock are a potentially vulnerable target for the introduction of animal disease-causing agents. Large events have occurred from apparently inadvertent introductions. For example:

• A 2001 UK Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak led to the slaughter of 6.1 million animals [1]
• A Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak in the United Kingdom between 1994 and 2004 was associated with over 151 deaths [2]
• Avian Influenza (AI) outbreaks in China since 2003 have been associated with up to a 25% reduction in poultry trade and over 25 deaths [3].

Such vulnerability raises the issue of exactly how vulnerable we are and what types of pre-event action and/or planning can be done to limit risk and bolster resiliency. This article reviews a number of economic aspects related to these issues.

2 THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSIDERING ECONOMICS

Often, recommendations on the management of animal disease is based primarily on epidemic simulation models that minimize the time to control disease outbreaks by limiting the disease spread while treating or removing infected animals. After the 2001 UK FMD outbreak, such modeling was termed “armchair epidemiology” and was strongly criticized [4]. The reason for the criticism was the policy of contiguous herd slaughter used in addition to the slaughter of infected and dangerous contact herds, which was considered ...