Production and Management Featured Articles
Eliminating Disease - Why, When and How: A Financial Evaluation
By Luc Dufresne, Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, USA. - The last decades have seen great improvement in swine production. Better genetics, nutrition, flow management, and building design have helped improve production efficiency and profitability. Unfortunately, disease challenges remain as a major stumbling block on the road to stable and profitable production.
SEW and Multi-site production have been bastardized to improve system
efficiencies but have failed to eliminate disease. Faced with chronic health
problems that cripple their efficiency, many producers look at disease
eradication as an option to improve profitability of their enterprise.
All eradication programs incur direct and indirect costs that need to be
recovered by increased efficiency; (lower cost of production and/or increased
through-put) and/or increased product value (better premium at slaughter
house or increased value of replacement animal). Another important factor to
evaluate is risk. Risk is an inherent part of an eradication project. Risk of partial
or total failure of the eradication project; or if the project is successful, risk of
recontamination with the same agent or a new agent. Eradication projects often
create major shifts in the age of the population that can also trigger new health
problems.
In swine production, the decision to eradicate a disease needs to be evaluated
not only from a health aspect, but also as a business decision, looking at return
on investment which encompasses a thorough risk assessment.
To read the full paper Click Here (19 page pdf file, opens in new browser)
Source: Paper presented at the Banff Pork Seminar - January 2002
