The impact of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreaks and alternative control strategies on agricultural markets and trade

Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is one of the most contagious animal diseases. Because of the easy transfer between animals, FMD is of importance to the domestic market, but also to international agricultural trade. Infected countries are often confronted with rigorous measures implemented by their trading partners. The guidelines set out by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) define the waiting period after which a country that experienced an FMD epidemic can be declared as free of the disease for international trade purposes. In order to minimize the duration of this period, infected developed countries have often implemented mass slaughter strategies. The aim of the paper is to examine the impact of alternative control strategies on the domestic market of the infected country and on international markets. To this end, synergies between two modeling systems have been exploited: the OECD’s Aglink-Cosimo model and the GTAP model. This study provides insight on the impact of FMD and alternative control practices and shows how the two models can be combined to provide quantitative estimates for a broad range of economic indicators.