Abstract
Indirect costs of animal disease outbreaks often significantly exceed
the direct costs. Despite their importance, indirect costs remain poorly
characterised due to their complexity. In this study, we developed a
framework to assess the indirect costs of a hypothetical African Swine
Fever outbreak in Switzerland. We collected data through international
and national stakeholder interviews, analysis of national disease
control regulations and industry data. We developed a framework to
capture the resulting qualitative and quantitative data, categorise the
impacts of these regulations, and rank the impacts in order of
importance. We then developed a spreadsheet model to calculate the
indirect costs of one category of control measure for an individual
group of stakeholders. We developed a decision tree model to guide the
most economically favourable implementation plan for a given control
measure category, under different outbreak scenarios. Our results
suggest that the most important measure/impact categories were
‘Transport logistics’, ‘Consumer demand’, ‘Prevention of wild boar and
domestic pig contact’ and ‘Slaughter logistics’. In our hypothetical
scenario, the greatest costs associated with ‘Prevention of wild boar
and domestic pig contact’ were due to assumed partial or total
depopulation of pig farms in order to reduce herd size to comply with
the simulated control regulations. The model also provides suggestions
on the most economically favourable strategy to reduce contact between
wild boar and domestic pigs in control areas depending on the duration
of the outbreak. Our approach provides a new framework to integrate
qualitative and quantitative data to guide disease control strategy.
This method could be useful in other countries and for other diseases,
including in data- and resource-poor settings, or areas with limited
experience of animal disease outbreaks.