Project

Economic and decision making aspects of animal health, food safety and new technologies

This permanent staff project is the umbrella under which various studies are carried out. The central theme in these studies is that they are meant to support decision making in the animal production chain. This can be either at the animal level (for example the decisions to treat cows or to separate milk), on the farm level (for
example the economic consequences of an Neospora outbreak or the economic efficiency of investment in an automatic milking system) or at the sector (chain) level (for example the insurability of dairy cattle diseases or the optimal application of control measures for E coli VTEC) . Because farming is in principle an economic activity, economic analysis is a main element of these decision support studies. Various methods are being used, but a main element is the use of simulation modeling in different types, depending on the questions to be answered. A large part of this work is carried out at the Department of Farm Animal Health of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.