Project

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

Brief project description

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. Some examples of projects currently (c) and recently (r) carried out include:

  • Risk analysis of dairy cattle diseases and the possibilities for insurance (r)
  • Trade-off between ethical and economic and economical aspects of (plant) genomics ©
  • Optimization of control measures for E coli VTEC in the beef chain ©
  • Cost effectiveness of automatic milking ®
  • Costs of salmonella dublin at the dairy farm ®
  • Economic damage of Neospora on dairy farms ©
  • Economic aspects of mastitis: costs, effectiveness of management and the use of bonus/malus systems to influence the behaviour of farmers ©
  • Financial results of farmers that invested in automatic milking ®
  • Economic aspects of subclinical endometritis ®
  • Costs and benefits of electronic I&R systems (RFID) in the goat and sheep sector ©
  • Use of sensors on automatic milking systems to separate abnormal milk and make decisions on individual cows with respect to mastitis and milk quality ©