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.

ベトナムでは豚肉が食肉消費量の約70%以上を占めるため，豚肉のサルモネラ属菌による汚染は消費者に甚大な健康被害をもたらすことが考えられる。本研究はベトナム国フンイェン省のと畜場から市場への豚肉のバリューチェーンにおけるサルモネラ属菌の汚染状況を調べるため，と畜場でのと体と，市場での豚肉における汚染率，ならびに市場販売豚肉における菌数の定量化を目的に実施された。調査はフンイェン省のと畜場2か所を無作為に抽出し実施した。2014年2月にこれら2つのと畜場において，計88と体からスワブサンプルを採取し，そのうち21と体について市場まで追跡し，解体後に市場で販売されている豚肉から再度採取した。と体スワブにおいてはサルモネラ属菌の汚染率を，市場の豚肉においては汚染率と最確数（MPN）を算出した。

と体におけるサルモネラ汚染率は25.0% （22/88，95%CI : 16.7%-35.6%）であり，市場での豚肉の汚染率は28.6% （6/21，95%CI : 12.2%-52.3%）であった。2つのと畜場の比較では，汚染率に有意な差は見られず（22.2%（10/45）と27.9%（12/43），x²＝0.18，df＝1，p＝0.71），また，と体と豚肉の汚染率にも有意な差が見られなかった（25.0% （22/88）と28.6%（6/21），x²＝0.0034，df＝1，p＝0.95）。と畜場から市場にかけてのサルモネラ汚染状況の変化について，カッパ係数0.53，寄与リスク割合は53.3%であり，市場での販売豚肉汚染の半数以上がと畜場で起きている可能性が示唆された。豚肉における菌濃度は<0.3-1.5MPN/gであった。ベトナムでの豚肉のサルモネラ属菌の汚染率はと畜場から市場にかけて高く維持されており，不衛生な加工によると畜場での汚染とともに，不衛生な輸送・販売管理についても，人の健康リスクを考える上で問題であることが示唆された。

ペット喪失に伴う深刻な心身の症状が2カ月を超えて持続する場合には，医師による対応が必要である可能性が高いと考えられる。東京および愛知の動物火葬施設で利用者に対して精神健康調査票（GHQ28）による追跡調査を実施したところ，死別直後で22/37名（59.5%），2カ月後で17/30名（56.7%），4カ月後で11/27名（40.7%）の遺族がリスク群と判定された。また，心身の症状に影響のある要因として，遺族の年齢，動物との関わり方，家族機能が挙げられた。ペット喪失後の問題を減らすためには，こうした要因をもつ飼育者に獣医療従事者が事前に気づき，予防的な対応をとることが重要と考えられる。

“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.