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Prevention and control of animal diseases worldwide
Part I: Economic analysis: prevention versus outbreak costs
These objectives fall within the broad framework of the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the
UN General Assembly in 2000 7 .
Certain indicators can be used to measure the extent of the difference in the importance of these goals
between countries. In particular, the following key socio-economic variables and indicators have been
included in our country classification:
• GDP per capita and the Human Development Index (HDI 8 ) as indicators of relative wealth.
• Share of agricultural sector in total GDP, and LSUs (livestock units) per person, as indicators of
the contribution of agriculture and livestock to the economy. These indicators provide measures of
the relative importance of the sector in the macro-economy. Used in conjunction with poverty
measures (such as the UNDP HDI), they can indicate the socio-economic dimensions of the
sector, from which conclusions can be drawn for the sector’s importance both in macro-economic
and in micro-economic terms. In countries with a high incidence of rural poverty / poor ranking
on the HDI the sector is expected to play a greater role in poverty alleviation, particularly when
combined with high rates of LUs per person;
• Share of agricultural exports in total value of exports, and net trade position (exports minus
imports of livestock products) as an indicator of trade orientation. This indicates the relative
importance of the sector in trade terms. Countries have been consequently classified as (net)
exporters or (net) importers.
This has allowed us to classify countries in clusters, from which conclusions can be drawn with respect to
the different interests and position of each cluster in terms of animal health prevention and the relative
impact of animal disease outbreaks. The complete analysis and classification of each country can be found
in Annex 3.
3.3. Farming systems
It is important to differentiate between farming systems because the impact and hence cost of a particular
disease can vary significantly depending on the production system. FMD, for instance, will cause higher
production losses in dairy herds than in beef herds. Similarly, HPAI, affects smallholder poultry systems
differently than commercial large-scale poultry based systems: in medium to small holder poultry farms,
which tend to have a medium to low level of biosecurity, animal mortality is higher than in intensive
production systems (where biosecurity tends to be higher), but the latter inevitably suffer from a higher
rate of financial risk due to the higher poultry concentration levels (A14) 9 . Fast transmission of diseases
7 At the millennium summit of the United Nations in September 2000, all the 189 member nations joined in a formal
commitment to reduce global deprivation, including poverty, hunger, poor health and abuses of human rights. This
commitment was taken into a series of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015.
8 A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development—a long and
healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living. For details on how the index is calculated, see UNDP
statistics.
9 E.g. the FAO recommendations on AI prevention in Asia state that the probability of infection is higher in backyard
and village farms (production sectors 3 and 4) than in commercial/semi-commercial ones (sectors 1 and 2), however,
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