Hidden Costs of Disease Outbreaks in Animal Agriculture
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Yesterday, we reported on the impact of avian influenza on egg prices. But beyond the higher consumer prices and animal losses, outbreaks are also very costly to monitor and contain. In her research on biosecurity, Dr. Jada Thompson has studied the vast economic impact of these outbreaks.
Thompson... "The practicalities of large scale events is you have the mobilization of teams that have to go places, and so there's a huge human capital cost. You talk about USDA APHIS that supports a lot of that work. And so if they're working with a leaner crew, that means that that leaner crew is having to go more places and they're having to manage more. So now you have tired crews out there. You have people that are having to be away from home for longer or we have to hire more contract labor to help support that type of thing.”
Thompson said there’s also a heavy emotional cost for producers and workers direclty impacted by these outbreaks.
Thompson... ”It is mentally detrimental to have the entire house of birds depopulated. I wrote a paper with a colleague and we talked about the mental health effects of large catastrophic events and it is one of the things on the farmers, on the responders that are having to come help you–the veterinarians, the cleanup crews. I mean it is not casual. And so I think that those are other pieces that we don't often talk about, but that there is also a cost here.”
Dr. Thompson is currently working on a paper investigating these mental health impacts further.
