PhD defence: Analysing incentive and cost sharing issues in livestock disease management

PhD defence

Juliet Biira

Abstract

This PhD thesis tackles two main issues in livestock health management: a) the incentives for animal disease prevention on Danish livestock farms and b) allocation of costs of animal disease outbreaks and animal disease preparedness, among stakeholders involved in the livestock sector. The main contributions of this thesis are firstly the investigation of incentives for Danish livestock farmers to prevent animal diseases at the farm level and recommendations on how they could be improved. Secondly, the exploration of a mutual fund as a possibility for risk pooling among farmers and how it can be arranged and lastly, a theoretical contribution to how disease preparedness costs could be shared.
The first paper shows us that Danish farmers have high incentives for prevention of animal diseases but these can be improved by properly stating repercussions for not following rules and re analyzing the compensation strategy.
Paper 2 and 3 show that some farmers are willing to participate and pay for a mutual fund covering indirect costs related to animal diseases and risk based payment is possible.
In paper 4, we show the possibility of risk profiling Danish pig farms and how this could be utilized in mutuals or government compensation schemes.
Paper 5 theoretically shows how costs related to animal disease preparedness can be shared fairly using a liability index.

Supervisors

Jens Leth Hougaard, Professor, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Mogens Lund, Director, Division of Food Production and Society, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Norway

Assesment Committee

Jørgen Dejgård Jensen, Professor, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Jarkko Niemi, Professor, Natural Resources Institute Finland, Finland

Carl-Johan Lagerkvist, Professor, Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

If you are interested in a full copy of the thesis, you can contact the PhD student or one of the supervisors.