Download Decision-making frameworks in management of livestock disease

Decision-making frameworks in
management of livestock disease:
epidemiology, economics, politics & law
Professor Graham Medley
Biological Sciences
University of Warwick
Background
• Start in 2007
• Infectious diseases are an ecological problem: interaction of
host and pathogen
– Diagnostics (are there good data?)
– Transmission patterns (risk factors for infection and disease)
– Impact (productivity losses, welfare)
– Interventions (vaccines, movement restrictions etc.)
– Combine into frameworks that inform policy makers &
producers of the cost-effectiveness of different interventions
• But it doesn’t work like that… policy is a mystery to me
– Foot and mouth epidemic (FMD); bovine tuberculosis (bTB);
bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV)
• DEFRA funded a bTB project from which we bled 10,000
animals on 114 farms three times in three years
• BBSRC funded a seroepidemiology project to test for five
infections (+bTB = six )
Objectives
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Who does and should decide whether a disease should be controlled
by elimination and how should they make that decision?
– Endemic disease (vs. exotic) – epidemiology is only part of the
issue; the economic, regulatory and political systems combine to
“live with” the disease
For a given level of regulation, to what extent is disease controlled?
– Who wants it controlled and why?
– Who should decide the target level to which any disease should be
controlled?
Consumer demand can be changed by public perceptions, and
international trade is greatly influenced by disease.
– 2001 FMD epidemic and the on-going bTB epidemic
The project will concentrate on six diseases of cattle found in the UK.
– We already have considerable information
– We will collect more data on how farmers make decisions that
influence these diseases.
– We will interview individuals to understand the interactions.
– We will construct computer models that include the important
processes to seek better ways of controlling them.
Interdisciplinarity
•
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?
•
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)? What are the drivers for farmer
behaviour?
•
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?
•
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?
An example - bTB
• Why is it perceived as a disease problem?
– c.f. FMD and BVDV
• Why is it controlled as it is?
– Compensation
• What are the politics of bTB control?
– Badgers
• What is the aim of current policy?
– Trade barriers
Stakeholders
• Farmers, public (consumers), retailers (supermarkets), elected
representatives (MPs and National Farmers’ Union),
veterinarians, EU and Government officials (DEFRA and SVS)
• How do 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
• We are seeking to establish the parameters of the policy
network, who the key actors are, whether they are clustered in
any way and whether there are actors who do not directly
interact with each other.
– Think of a Shakespeare play in which not all the characters
may meet each other, at least not until the finale.
Originality
• 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
– It has been considered just too difficult to think of diseases
simultaneously, and the necessary data and knowledge
have not existed previously
• 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
Who We Are
• Jonathan Cave (Economics)
– Economist & game theorist
• Wyn Grant & Justin Greaves (Politics)
– Political scientists
• Laura Green (Biological Sciences)
– Veterinary epidemiologist
• Matt Keeling (Mathematics / Biological Sciences)
– Mathematical epidemiologist
• John McEldowney (Law)
– Environmental law
• Graham Medley (Biological Sciences)
– Infectious disease epidemiologist
– [email protected]
• Experts in our fields, with the aim of developing an
interdisciplinary group targeting livestock infections in the UK