Global Burden of Animal Diseases
Current systems of animal health data and analysis provide no systematic information on production losses, expenditure or wider economic impacts of animal disease and health problems.
Yet the public, private and NGO sectors invest millions of dollars each year in animal health research, education and disease mitigation actions. These investments are made either with:
- cost benefit analyses based on assumptions
- rules of thumb (heuristics) of whether a problem needs to be addressed
- reactions due to crises
The system works yet fails to optimize animal health systems and limits the ability of this system to minimize direct and indirect impacts on human welfare. Given that livestock are between two thirds and three quarters of terrestrial animal biomass globally and dominate agricultural land use and water the lack of a systematic animal disease burden information system is a major global problem. Morally, ethically and economically it is not justifiable to continue with an ad hoc system for animal disease investments.
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