The present study considers the socioeconomic effects of livestock disease, the usefulness of animal health economics in mitigating poverty associated with livestock disease, and the issues related to this aspect of animal health economics based on the application of economics in three real-world cases : foot-and-mouth disease in the Philippines, African swine fever in Madagascar, and livestock insurance in Vietnam.

Animal health economics can be considered an analytical tool that focuses primarily on human economic behaviors related to the problem of livestock disease. As the present paper demonstrates, we anticipate the application of various economic analysis techniques to the problems arising from livestock disease. Collaboration between veterinary epidemiology, which studies the emergence of diseases in groups of animals (as well as animal behavior), and economics (an integrated discipline known as animal health economics) can be anticipated to produce more effective measures for controlling infectious diseases among livestock.

Animal diseases cause economic losses to the farmers by the death of animals, reduction of productivity, quality of products and market prices, and increased cost for disease prevention. Animal health economics is an important tool to quantify the magnitude of animal diseases. Some examples of economic evaluations on animal diseases in Japan conducted by the author are being presented. Cost of the tick eradication program conducted in Kuroshima island, Okinawa, was ¥23,800,000 and benefit from the same program was ¥31,400,000, demonstrating the cost-benefit ratio of 1:1.3. Total loss due to bovine neosporosis in Japan was estimated to be ¥2,173,480,000/year. The total loss due to bovine mastitis in tie-stall farms in Hokkaido was estimated to be ¥10 billions/year. The total loss due to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndromes in Japan was estimated to be ¥28 billions/year. Through the above studies, the author has been evaluating the cost of the diseases. Further development and application of animal health economics in veterinary science is strongly expected.

Problems occurred on livestock production are related to several factors that interacted with each other, and it is difficult to quantify possible risk factors affecting to production performance. Production epidemiology is an essential tool for assessing these problems by identifying the incidence rate, relative frequency, and risk factors related to the problems using large database obtained from livestock production. Recently the livestock industry changes their standard operation procedures to improve their production efficiency and increases number of animals per farm. These changes build a large database that contains record and process of animal identifications or production event. However, an application of the database in livestock species remains under-utilized because a farmer or adviser does not have enough knowledge or time to perform epidemiological analysis. It is important to enhance our knowledge on production epidemiology to identify problem areas and improve their production in livestock production. This paper provides the concepts and the applications of production epidemiology using the production data acquired from commercial livestock operations in order to improve production efficiency.

In Vietnam, pork is the most consumed meat, and contamination of pork with Salmonella spp. is a serious public health problem. This study aimed to trace the value chain forward from pig slaughterhouses to markets in order to elucidate the dynamics of Salmonella contamination on the pork value chain in Hung Yen, Vietnam. This survey was conducted between January and February 2014 in two randomly selected slaughterhouses in Hung Yen. Swab samples were collected from 88 carcasses and of them, 21 carcasses were traced to the markets and pork samples were collected from these samples. Microbial tests were performed to detect the presence of Salmonella from carcass samples at slaughterhouses. MPN was determined in addition to the presence of Salmonella for pork at markets.

The Salmonella prevalence on carcasses was 25.0% (22/88, 95%CI : 16.7%-35.6%), and on pork at markets was 28.6% (6/21, 95%CI : 12.2%-52.3%). There was no significant difference in prevalence between carcasses (25.0%) and pork (28.6%, x²＝0.0034, df＝1, p＝0.95). There was no significant difference in the prevalence of Salmonella on pig carcass samples between the two slaughterhouses (22.2% (10/45) and 27.9% (12/43), x²＝0.18, df＝1, p＝0.71). The transition of Salmonella contamination status on pork was observed, and the kappa value 0.53, and attributable risk percent 53.3% calculated suggested that more than half of the Salmonella prevalence in marketed pork can be attributable to contamination in slaughterhouse. MPN of positive pork samples ranged from < 0.3 to 1.5MPN/g. The prevalence remained high at the same level between the slaughterhouse and market, and the contamination largely occurs before the end of slaughtering due to inadequate hygiene, but cross-contamination during transportation and marketing also poses a risk to humans.

Psychosomatic symptoms of bereaved pet owners were longitudinally evaluated through a questionnaire survey. Results showed that the numbers of suspected cases of mental illness 0, 2, and 4 months after the pet loss were 22/37 (59.5%), 17/30 (56.7%), and 11/27 (40.7%), respectively. Risk factors could include age of owner, relationship between the owner and the pet, and family function.

“Guidelines for specific domestic animal infectious diseases control”, stipulated in the Act on Domestic Animal Infectious Diseases Control, prescribes the control measures for prevention and containment of major domestic animal infectious diseases. As of December 2015, the guidelines for Rinderpest, Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, Foot-and-mouth disease, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Classical swine fever, African swine fever and Highly pathogenic avian influenza and low pathogenic avian influenza (7 guidelines in total) are issued. Among these, the guideline for Highly pathogenic avian influenza and low pathogenic avian influenza was amended in September 2015, and this article gives an overview of the amendment.