In the present era, most of the activities are diverted in a way such that maximum income is generated from them. One of the basic aims of animal rearing is to improve the economic status of the human. Health status of the animal significantly affects the animal productivity and income generated from them. In animal rearing, a significant part of the input expenditure is spent on disease prevention or cure.
The Economics of Animal Disease Control:
Economics is a social science dealing with the production and distribution of goods and hence of wealth. It analyses how meagre resources are allocated between different uses and groups within the economic framework. Initially, economic thought was developed under the name “political economy” and examined the production and distribution of money in a society comprising people from varied economic groups.
Industrialization made people to view the economic relationship between industrialists, workers and landowners. This was the attitude of Marx and indicates the Marxist economics. Capitalist economies view the economic interactions as the inter-relationship between producers and consumers, who meet in the market place and try to satisfy each-others need.
It targets at critically analyzing the “positive”, i.e., the real or observable aspects of this relationships in the market and to derive generally applicable theories. It does not associate itself with the “normative” aspects which relate to value judgments about how the economic process ought to function.
The study of economics is conventionally divided into two areas. Microeconomics analyses the individual producer and consumer behaviour, emphasizing the factors affecting the production and consumption. Macroeconomics analyses the overall economy. It considers national income, balance of payments, overall savings and investment.
Development economics deals with the specific problems of the under developed economies, it evaluates their economic policies (price control, subsidies, taxes, channellising funds into specific areas, aimed at overcoming their economic problems and improving the living standard of their people. The topics covered include an analysis of the reasons, implications and remedies of poverty and division of economy between the agricultural and the industrial sectors in Third World countries. It economically examines the type of technology, employment scenario, and movement of people, trade and market.
Project appraisal is economically analyzing the project prior to undertaking it. Project evaluation involves economically evaluating the projects after its start and at specified intervals till its completion. The project is evaluated for its practical implications considering economic principles for decision-making based on a social benefit-cost analysis. It ultimately finds whether the project would be profitable. Budgeting and accounting may also be utilized for this economic analysis.
Scientific and Technical Review of Animal Disease Management:
There is sometimes a degree of hesitation before economics are taken into account in decisions concerning investment in animal health programmes. Preference is often given to the use of biological criteria of efficacy and expected outcomes. However, the challenge for the future is to develop an appropriate balance between the biophysical and economic criteria in rational decision-making. This is particularly important for countries contemplating major disease control or eradication programmes, to relieve the burden of a given disease on livestock production, or to open avenues to increased trade in a particular livestock product.
To reduce the costs on disease prevention/cure, methods to reduce the expenditure on antiparasitic drugs (both against endo- and ectoparasites), antibiotics and vitamin/mineral preparations and to minimize the diseases/conditions against which such therapies are required need to be looked into.
Main Areas for Animal Health Economics:
i. Effects of globalization and consumer demand on risk and risk management in agriculture and the food chain with particular reference to the changing nature and perception of risks associated with farm animal disease.
ii. Optimal strategies to promote farm animal health within the context of whole farm management.
iii. Implementation of these strategies through education, training and decision support, etc.
iv. Development of economic weights for selection indices to be used in dairy cattle breeding programmes with particular emphasis on health and fertility traits.
v. Impact of bovine infertility on resource management in agriculture.
The disease surveillance and control section of any animal rearing system must give information about the notifiable diseases, zoonoses (diseases which can spread between human and animals), other diseases (diseases which are not notifiable or zoonoses), animal pathogens (organisms and associated derivatives which cause disease), disease control (gives the background information on disease control and includes advice on biosecurity, veterinary surveillance (covers proposed strategy for enhancing veterinary surveillance), endemic disease surveillance (provides quarterly surveillance reports of endemic diseases), international disease monitoring (qualitative hazard assessments and reports on major animal exotic disease outbreaks), dog and cat travel and risk information (a scheme to find out about the occurrence of exotic diseases in dogs and cats in Great Britain).
The Animal Health and Welfare Strategy:
The animal health and welfare strategy should work to improve the health and welfare of kept animals. It should be a strategy for all who have a role to play— government, the food and farming industry, vets, consumer groups and many others. It covers animals kept for pleasure or profit—pets, livestock, game and wildlife where it impacts on kept animals.
The strategy aim should be to develop a new partnership in which we can make a lasting and continuous improvement in the health and welfare of kept animals while protecting society, the economy, and the environment from the effect of animal disease. It must set out a vision for animal health and welfare showing where we want to be at a specified time in the future.
Literature on costs and benefits of preventing animal diseases aims to use evidence from the literature to assess the best ways to measure the real benefits of improvements in farm animal health. With such evidence, it will be possible to estimate the full relative investment potential of animal health and use such information to encourage farmers to adopt good practice in support of achieving desirable strategy for animal health and welfare.
Livestock systems are important in India, vulnerable to policy reform and concentrated in fragile regions. There is also evidence that they offer most scope for benefit from increased investment in disease prevention. Furthermore, the responsibility for controlling endemic diseases rests with farmers rather than the state.
In order to assess the true potential benefits from improvement in disease prevention it is necessary to assess the avoidable losses (as opposed to total costs) from disease. Simulation modelling can provide a solution to this problem. The approach has the added potential advantage of allowing results to be adapted to the individual circumstances of decision-makers. Several mechanistic models of the epidemiology of important endemic diseases of various animal have been published that exploit scientific advance to provide the necessary adaptability. There is therefore a need for interdisciplinary systems research in this area.
Static deterministic evaluations of avoidable losses are useful at regional or sectoral level but do not reflect the main impact of disease as experienced at the farm level. Here it is important to capture the risk that disease represents to farm business viability as it varies over the course of an epidemic.
The interactions between diseases and between disease control and other farm management activities are also important. As well as establishing the opportunity cost of investing in animal health and welfare, more holistic long-term studies will reveal the impact of disease on the sustainability of an agricultural business.
This aspect of animal health economics requires focus on the impact of animal disease on the land and hence the environment. The use of decision analysis techniques in animal health economics has helped to progress this aspect of research and should therefore be encouraged. Knowledge transfer to farmers should emphasize the role of animal health in risk management.
Voluntary health schemes, particularly those that offer certified health status provide a ready-made system to enhance the health and welfare of farm animals. Such costs could be considerably reduced if farmers in a region co-operated with each other. However, the problem of ‘free-riders’ makes it difficult to achieve the consensus necessary. This situation indicates a need to re-assess the role of state in such schemes.
An important aspect of this strategy is the promotion of farm animal health and welfare through disease prevention rather than cure. It encourages animal keepers to adopt good practice in this regard, there is a need to identify and assess the real benefits of improvements in animal health and welfare. How best to measure the economic impact of farm animal disease, gaps in evidence, areas for future research and implications for future farm management practice.
Basically why epidemic and zoonotic disease control should remain the responsibility of government while endemic disease prevention and control may be a private matter, the latter are considered private goods because vets and farmers who chose to control them can easily exclude others from any benefits gained.
Also there is strong competition (rivalry) for the services concerned. Neither of these attributes applies to the control of epidemic or zoonotic diseases. However, overlap exists where endemic disease gives rise to significant externalities or control efforts for specific diseases interact. Farmers are generally slow to adopt disease prevention (biosecurity) strategies.
Accounting for Time in Animal Health Economics:
Decision-making at individual farm level is complicated by the cyclical nature of agricultural production systems. Fixed assets such as land and breeding livestock are ‘harvested’ repeatedly so that decisions in one production cycle must be taken with due consideration for their consequences in future cycles.
This is particularly important in the case of animal disease where infection in one cycle often impairs performance in subsequent cycles, e.g., with mastitis. Susceptibility to disease in later cycles may also be affected by exposure in earlier cycles and in any case, tends to increase with age. Productivity on the other hand may initially rise with age and then decline. All these factors must be taken into account when dealing with the economics of animal health in breeding livestock.
Dynamic programming (DP) provides a framework for the economic analysis of multi-stage decision problems. It has frequently been applied to natural resource management problems including some in animal health economics. For example, optimal replacement of mastitis cows and the relative value of different mastitis control procedures.
The technique has also provided a useful framework for establishing the economic weight of goal traits for use in dairy cattle breeding programmes where benefits accrue over long periods. Progress might be made without recourse to complex bio-economic simulation modelling at individual farm level.
Most estimates of average farm animal disease costs in the literature lack both economic and scientific rigour. Studies that quote the total cost of diseases rather than the avoidable loss exaggerate the benefits of investment in disease prevention and may thereby come to lack credibility with farmers.
Even so, their implied value is small in comparison to normal variation in output prices for livestock. A different picture emerges from studies of animal disease as a source of risk to farm businesses. Animal disease may represent a significant proportion of the risk (variation in farm income) over which the livestock farmer has some control.
There is also evidence that disease costs are positively skewed thus average costs could mask the effects of rare though potentially devastating epidemics. A knowledge transfer campaign based on risk management at whole- farm level and backed by research into the sources of variation in avoidable disease losses therefore holds promise,
A more holistic (systems) approach to animal health is also required in this context requiring an interdisciplinary research and development/extension effort. In particular, more epidemiological studies are needed to establish the effectiveness of alternative biosecurity strategies under different physical and financial circumstances.
To be cost-effective, such strategies must provide proven protection against a wide range of diseases. It will also be important to include general farm management activities within the biosecurity strategy. For example, replacement policy for breeding livestock has considerable impact on animal health and on farm profits in the long-term.
The management of fertility is also a crucial issue, closely associated with animal health and welfare as well as sustainability. By joining-up these disparate issues, it should be possible to demonstrate the full potential benefits of establishing and maintaining freedom from specific endemic diseases through membership of appropriate health schemes. The more farmers that join such schemes, the greater the benefit for all as the risks of breeches in biosecurity are reduced. Scheme members may also be able to pool knowledge and resources for mutual benefit.
A potential problem arises in the overlap between public and private goods/bads related to animal health at farm level. Also some of the endemic diseases have zoonotic potential thus creating a public interest in how farmers deal with them. Furthermore, how farmers deal with endemic disease may have consequences for animal welfare and the environment.
These factors make it difficult to draw the distinctions between public and private interests. Farmers’ perspective will be the necessary theme for knowledge transfer to encourage disease prevention in support of the strategy for animal health and welfare.
However, a wider economic analysis will also be required to support the wider resource allocation decisions needed at national level to tackle issues of public concern that might otherwise arise such as zoonoses and animal welfare. Such decisions should consider possible use of funds. Some of the money saved due to decoupling subsidy from production could be spent on public concerns related to zoonoses, animal health and animal welfare via the cross-compliance mechanism.
Simulation modelling provides a vital basis for systems research in animal health. There are many epidemiological models but so far relatively few combine epidemiology with economics to identify optimal animal health establishment and maintenance strategies. Greater research effort in this area would help overcome the problem of lack of information that hinders the development of proper economic evaluations of animal disease.
Such an approach makes the most of what information we have on the science of animal disease and helps to identify important gaps. By using mechanistic models where possible, adaptations can be made to reflect specific decision-making circumstances. This will become increasingly important in the more volatile markets that will follow liberalisation of trade in agricultural commodities.
However, this does not mean that sophisticated simulation models and associated decision support systems will always be appropriate for use at farm level. Studies of knowledge transfer requirements in livestock agriculture suggest that many farmers require more traditional approaches. Carefully selected and sensitively communicated output from simulation studies, supported by appropriate local advice, training and information may therefore be the best approach.
Application of Economic Animal Disease Control Policy:
For better animal health projects and programmes, principles of economics contribute at the following levels towards the improvement of policy and decision-making:
i. In the livestock sector, it explains how economic factors influence producers (their decisions on what, how and when to produce; the acceptable prices; whether to expanded or contract the business and production and investment, etc.); factors determining demand for livestock products, how these affect the quantity and quality of products bought, and how prices are fixed in different circumstances (micro-economics).
The economic aspects of the different livestock production systems can be described by collecting relevant information on producer-consumer behaviour—its overall effect on price structure and economic outputs and how producers and consumers interact. A particular livestock production system can be described in economic terms by looking at the value of output, the cost of the inputs, calculating the income received by the producers, butchers, traders and other middlemen, and examining the final price paid by the consumers.
ii. Once the production system as well as the interaction between the consumer and producer is identified, it becomes feasible to evaluate and predict the likely economic effects of any changes introduced into the sector. Such changes would include both changes affecting prices of inputs or outputs, income of consumers, demand and qualitative and quantitative fluctuations in the output due to introduction of improved inputs, changing the management and animal health scenario.
iii. Ultimately, economic analysis makes it possible to arrange this information for evaluating, categorizing hence comparing different programmes or projects and assessing their overall economic feasibility.
Thus, for an animal health project, economic theory can help explain and describe producer-consumer behaviour, the production systems involved, predict and quantify the effect of the project on output, prices, demand and incomes. This information may be arranged in the form of a benefit-cost analysis. Then, having sequenced and compared the alternatives, a decision can be made whether to implement the project or not.
The technical feasibility of any proposed measure must be examined by the relevant specialists (veterinarians, animal husbandry experts, sociologists, economists, management professionals, etc.). Then, its overall compatibility with the stated policies and goals of the livestock sector must be ensured, and, ultimately, its feasibility from an organizational and social point of view needs to be verified.
Here, economic (cost-benefit) analysis is made about long-term decisions on animal health programmes.
1. Demand and Supply:
Money is the “unit” in terms of which prices of goods are given in a cash economy, although barter can fix their relative values. Price is an item used in economic decision-making. An understanding of how they are derived and what they represent is crucial. For example, if a kid costs rupees 700, an adult sheep costs rupees 1400, 2 kids could be exchanged for 1 adult sheep in the absence of money, or both could be paid for in dollars, pounds or any other acceptable currency.
Concept of price theory emerged with the concept of goods with a limited supply and a constant demand or which needed labour for its production and consequently, the labour charges. Presently, prices are determined by the status of demand, depending upon the prices acceptable to producers as well as the consumers. For most goods, the quantity offered increases with increasing price, but the quantity demanded decreases.
If demand equals supply, the market is said to be “in equilibrium” at a particular price. This price is also called the market-clearing price, and it represents the point at which all that is produced is sold. At a higher price, supply exceeds demand, since production is more than demand. The reverse is true if the price is lower than the market-clearing price, in which case consumers are eager to buy but producers are reluctant to sell or produce, and, ultimately, the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied. If the individuals bargain in a real market place, they would continue to offer each other prices until they arrived at a mutually agreeable price, or else the consumer would decide not to buy or the producer not to sell.
If the government fixes a maximum price for an effective and much needed antibiotic with the objective of ensuring that low-income consumers can afford it. If this price is below the market-clearing price, producers would like to charge more, demand outstrips supply, and a black market develops where the drug is sold at prices nearer to, or even exceeding, the market-clearing price to those consumers who can afford it. Contrarily, if a government fixes a minimum price which is above the market-clearing price, supply will tend to outstrip demand at that price and suppliers will be forced to sell off their medicine cheaply, avoiding the government regulations.
The discussion of price theory has raised several points which need to be considered when deciding which prices to use in various economic studies.
i. Since for most goods the quantity demand falls as the price rises, government can stimulate demand for an item by setting a low price. Conversely, they can lower demand by setting a high price. A low price can be supported by a subsidy; a high price may be enforced by a purchase tax. For example, the consumption of milk may be encouraged by setting a low price for consumers, backed up by a subsidy to producers.
Similarly, new inputs into production systems, such as fertilizers, improved breeds of livestock, ploughs, etc. may be encouraged by subsidizing their cost to whoever is prepared to use them. In the absence of a support for artificially high or low prices, black markets tend to emerge. With medicine production, sometimes a very commonly needed medicine may involve a low cost of production, but because of its high utility, consumers may purchase it even at high costs.
ii. Different consumers may pay different prices for the same medicine. For example, because of the costs of transport, medicines may cost more in isolated rural areas or if they are imported from another region or country. Products may be more expensive when bought in retail outlets with high overheads, while items sold in large quantities are usually cheaper.
iii. A variety of prices, affected by a government subsidy or tax, exist for each item. These may be the price paid by the consumer, which may include a purchase tax or is the portion of the cost after the subsidy has been removed; the price received by the producer, which is the price before purchase tax is added or, in the case of a subsidy, the equivalent to the price paid by the consumer plus the government subsidy; the cost to the government of the subsidy or the revenue brought in by the tax; the cost to the nation, which is roughly equivalent to the price paid to the producer.
2. Elasticity:
In order to be able to measure precisely how supply and demand respond to changes in prices, the concept of elasticity was developed, which is expressed by the formula given below:
Elasticity should be expressed as a positive number. A minus sign is placed before the equation in the case of the price elasticity of demand, since demand falls as price increases, making the overall result positive. Thus, if the demand or supply changes by the same percentage as price, the elasticity is I.
If a price increases by 10% and elasticity is 2, supply will increase by 20%. Goods are said to be inelastic if the demand for them changes very little with price, in which case the calculated elasticity is less than 1. Such goods are generally necessities, for which demand is very stable. For luxuries, demand is generally more elastic. Similarly, for essential and commonly used medicines which have no substitutes, the demand is very stable.
Sometimes, producers have a target income rather than trying to maximize their profits, and once this income is reached, they cease to supply more goods. Thus, beyond a certain point, price increases may lead to a reduction in supply. This has been alleged to be the case with some nomadic cattle keepers, who only sell their animals to meet their fixed cash needs for such items as school fees, taxes, clothing, veterinary expenses, etc.
Changes in income must be taken into account when trying to project how the demand for livestock products will evolve over the years. Generally, the demand for good increases with increasing incomes, however, as people get wealthier they reduce the consumption of goods that are considered inferior, such as very cheap cuts of meat and/or clothing.
The concept of elasticity thus has the following practical applications in the formulation and assessment of animal disease control policy:
i. It helps in determining what the future supply and demand are likely to be in response to changes in prices and incomes.
ii. It is crucial in determining what prices to charge producers for various veterinary treatments. We may consider a hypothetical relationship between the demand for deworming and its price. The elasticity of demand varies, being very elastic as the price of an individual deworming falls from rupees 0.60 to about rupees 0.12 and relatively inelastic at rupees 0.85 per deworming.
Therefore, to ensure a deworming coverage of about 90%, it will be necessary to provide the deworming free of charge. To increase the coverage further, livestock owners might actually have to be persuaded. If de-wormers cost more than rupees 1.00 each, less than 5 to 10% of the livestock would be dewormed.
Suppose that a coverage of 685 is thought necessary for a voluntary deworming campaign to be effective, then the maximum amount that can be charged by the veterinary service is rupees 0.10. If the de-wormer costs rupees 0.12 per dose and the average cost of distributing and administering the distribution is rupees 0.30, it will be necessary to subsidize the campaign to the extent of rupees 0.32 per dose. The de-wormer might be cheaper if purchased in bulk, and the cost per dose for distribution and administration might go down as more animals are presented at each deworming session.
However, experience has shown that this analysis of livestock producers’ response to opportunities for deworming may not always correspond to reality. In some cases, producers avoid having their animals dewormed when the deworming is free but present them when a fee is imposed. This does not reflect a failure of economic theory to cope with reality; rather the belief of producers that free deworming may be inferior to those that are charged for.
Organized Farm Study for Animal Disease Management:
The expenditure incurred on the disease prevention/cure at the Sheep and Goat unit of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India, was analyzed (average rain fall = 50-70 cm/yr; average temperature = 6.9-37.3°C; average humidity = 29.5-87.3%). The maximum expenditure was incurred on antiparasitic drugs (both against endo and ecto parasites) followed by antibiotics and vitamin-mineral preparations in the descending order.
1. Antibiotic Resistance:
Significant increase in prevalence of resistance to antibiotics have been observed in common pathogens of humans in the United States and worldwide. The consequences of the appearance and spread of antibiotic resistance have included increasing morbidity, mortality, and cost of health care. The fundamental cause for the appearance and spread of antimicrobial resistance has been increasing antimicrobial use.
However, other factors contribute in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Recognizing the important causes of increasing antibiotic resistance in these settings has led to practical recommendations, which health care facilities and outpatient practitioners will need to review, adapt, and apply for maximum local effectiveness for progress to be made in addressing one of the most challenging problems facing modern medicine.
As hard as it is to believe, antibiotics are also used in agriculture on plants rather than mammals. They are applied sprays to fruit tree farms, for preventing bacterial infections of the fruit. The concentrations may kill all the bacteria on the trees at the time of spraying, but the residual antibiotics can encourage the growth of resistant bacteria that later colonize the fruit during processing and shipping.
The sprays randomly are carried by the wind and air for considerable distances to other trees and food plants, where the concentration is too low to eliminate infections but are still capable of killing off sensitive bacteria and thus giving the edge to resistant versions. These resistant bacteria work through the food chain, ending up in the intestinal tract of the host after the produce is eaten.
Another use of antimicrobial agents is the use of disinfectants and antiseptics. These agents are now used in everything including household cleaners, soaps, detergents, baby toys, cutting boards and even bedding! They are often bacteriostatic agents although some are bactericidal, and include quaternary ammonium compounds and triclosan (the most common) which mostly select for resistant strains, rather than permanently reducing the bacterial load in household items. Since these products are often used in food preparation, they increase our intake of resistant bacteria.
There are currently some major pathogens like E. faecalis, M. tuberculosis and P. aeruginosa of which certain strains exhibit total resistance to all currently used antibiotics. For instance, E. faecalis, which is normally resistant to cephalosporin, heavy use of these agents in immuno-compromised patients allows overgrowth of the organism, in the past one would have administered antibiotics, but some are now resistant to all antibiotics, and so become lethal agents. One major fear is that since E.faecalis is resistant for vancomycin that this will get passed via plasmid to other organisms, especially S. aureus.
2. Dealing with Antibiotic Resistance:
After determining that resistance is a major crisis, we need to come up with strategies to fight it:
The 1st strategy is to return to the bacterial control methods used before the widespread use of antibiotics; in other words, patient isolation with multi-drug resistant infections, gowning and gloving, hand washing and other antiseptic techniques.
The 2nd strategy is to culture hospitals for resistance to antiseptics and antibiotics, and rotate antiseptics and antibiotics on a regional basis, to assure maximum effect of antimicrobials. Reductions on the use of non-essential antimicrobials, such as the antiseptic soaps, detergents and toys should be implemented as well.
The 3rd strategy is to perform rational design of new antimicrobial agents that share no similarity with the current naturally derived antibiotics. Some interesting agents are under development, including a pump inhibitor for tetracycline resistance.
The 4th strategy is the reduction in the prescription of antibiotics in cases where they are not necessary. When veterinarians prescribe, they should culture and perform a minimum inhibitory concentration whenever practical, so that targeted drugs, rather than broad-spectrum drugs that encourage resistance and alteration of normal floral composition.
The 5th strategy is the cessation of sub-therapeutic administration in animal feeds and agriculture. Limit the use of major antibiotics for non-therapeutic uses.
The 6th strategy, perhaps the hardest one, is to educate owners to follow the prescribed regimen of the chosen antibiotic. Owners often stop giving antibiotics as soon there is improvement, thinking that the disease has been cured; this behaviour often selects for resistant bacteria. This behaviour may also lead to veterinarians giving more potent antibiotics, assuming that the owners may not give the full course.
Since owners often demand antibiotics for what are truly diseases of viral aetiology, the incomplete course will often select for resistance. It is imperative that veterinarians educate owners on the appropriate use of antibiotics. The appearance and spread of resistance in aerobic gram-negative pathogens, such as Enterobacter, against broad-spectrum, third-generation cephalosporins was reported in the 1980s, shortly after the introduction of those medications.
Resistance in these pathogens is often mediated by broad-spectrum beta-lactamases, which can inactivate most penicillin and cephalosporin antibiotics. The genes for these enzymes can be carried on plasmids, which may contain genes for products that inactivate other classes of antibiotics, such as aminoglycosides; these plasmids can sometimes be spread between different species and genera of aerobic gram-negative bacilli.
The appearance and spread of antimicrobial resistance has not been limited to bacteria. Since the introduction of fluconazole, strains of Candida causing hospital-acquired fungal infection have changed from ones with predictable fluconazole susceptibility to those with significant resistance. Most important in this regard is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The appearance and spread of resistance in aerobic gram-negative bacilli to multiple beta-lactam antibiotics has been observed worldwide as has quinolone resistance in both Staphylococcus and gram-negative bacteria.
3. Increase in Anthelmintic Resistance:
The prevention of parasitic relies on regular anthelmintic dosing to suppress faecal worm egg production and to reduce the build-up of infective larvae on the pasture. A common cause of failure in worm control programmes is the development of anthelmintic resistance. Fenbendazole resistance was found to be widespread.
Benzimidazole resistance seems to develop in stages:
i. Individual worms are still susceptible to higher doses of the drug. In this case giving a 5-day course of fenbendazole may overcome the resistance.
ii. Increased level of resistance—the worms are no longer susceptible even to repeated doses, as in the animals in this study.
For parasitic control, rotational grazing must be adhered to. For optimization of parasitic load there is need for regularly changing the anthelmintic and using them in a cyclic manner so that each time we do de-worming, it should be different from the drug used for the immediate earlier de-worming.
For using vitamin and minerals, it is essential that scientific calculations be made for their prevailing levels in the animal body and accordingly the deficient micronutrients may be supplemented in the diet or administered through the other routes. To reduce expenditures, it would be advisable to use appropriate, feeds rich in those micronutrients, which are deficient in the animals of a particular area.
4. Prices of Factors of Production and of Durable Goods:
Prices for durable goods and the various inputs of production are slightly more complex unlike prices as though they were for consumer goods that were purchased outright.
There are three factors of production to be considered for durable goods:
i. Labour, which can be divided into various grades;
ii. Land, which includes natural resources; and
iii. Capital, which covers both money itself and production goods such as livestock and machinery.
A fourth factor, entrepreneurship or management, is sometimes added to cover management and risk taking.
The factors of production are subject to the laws of supply and demand in the same way as other goods, but the demand for them is described as derived demand, since it depends on the demand for the products the factors are used to make. Given sufficient information about the production conditions, prices and the demand for final products, input-output models can be constructed for the whole economy to determine the demand for the different factors of production.
The many inputs of production and most durable goods can usually be bought in two ways:
i. Outright purchase, which confers on the owner all the incomes that can be earned from using a particular input or all the benefits from a particular durable good.
ii. Renting or hiring, this enables the purchaser to use the item for a stated period of time.
Underlying all investments or project appraisals is the concept that the various inputs or factors of production at the disposal of an individual or a nation should be used so as to earn that individual or nation the highest possible income. Thus, just as an individual should not borrow money at an interest of 10% per annum to finance an investment from which he expects a profit of 8% per annum, a nation should not invest resources in projects with a return of 8% when alternatives yielding 10% exist.
Conclusion:
i. In the present world, it is essential that we evaluate the economic feasibility of every animal rearing system. Proper animal health is a prime necessity for optimising the returns from the animals. A considerable part of the farm expenditure is for disease prevention/cure procedures. The farm study revealed that more expenses are incurred on anti-parasitic drugs, antibiotics and vitamin-mineral preparations.
We have to look for minimizing the expenses on these, their indiscriminate use. The problems of antibiotic and anthelmintic resistance have to be considered. For using antibiotics, it would be better if the effective antibiotic is chosen with proper dosing and time schedule. Rotational grazing, using anthelmintic in cyclic order and burning of pastures may reduce the problem of anthelmintic resistance.
ii. Economic impact may be measured by measuring avoidable losses not total costs; using simulation methods to overcome lack of information and make best use of scientific knowledge; present uncertainty in cost estimates; express results relative to alternative investments farmers could make; adopt a systems approach at whole-farm level to take account of interactions between diseases and to incorporate farm management practices that indirectly affect animal health.
iii. Decision analysis techniques can reflect the contribution animal health can make to risk management, allow for variations over time in both biological and economic aspects of animal health systems.
Future Needs:
Reliable sources of epidemiological information have to be strengthened and the information has to be evaluated economically, the benefits of disease prevention (e.g., biosecurity) measures have to be analyzed, analyze the flow of goods (e.g., farm profits, animal welfare, public health, sustainability) from animal health and identify the appropriate veterinary services needed, examine the potential economies of scale, co-operation and integration for disease prevention schemes and explore the role for constantly acquiring knowledge in the development and delivery of animal health and welfare strategies.