Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral epizootic disease of cloven-footed anim... more Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral epizootic disease of cloven-footed animals, which is controlled both by domestic and EU legislation. FMD has not been found in Finland since 1959.
Education on the use of economics applied to animal health (EAH) has been offered since the 1980s... more Education on the use of economics applied to animal health (EAH) has been offered since the 1980s. However, it has never been institutionalized within veterinary curricula and there is no systematic information on current teaching and education activities in Europe. Nevertheless the need for economic skills in animal health has never been greater. Economics can add value to disease impact assessments; improve understanding of people's incentives to participate in animal health measures; and help refine resource allocation for public animal health budgets. The use of economics should improve animal health decision making. An online questionnaire was conducted in European countries to assess current and future needs and expectations of people using EAH. The main conclusion from the survey is that education in economics appears to be offered inconsistently in Europe, and information about the availability of training opportunities in this field is scarce. There is a lack of harmonization of EAH education and significant gaps exist in the veterinary curricula of many countries. Depending on whether respondents belonged to educational institutions, public bodies, or private organizations, they expressed concerns regarding the limited education on decision making and impact assessment for animal diseases or on the use of economics for general management. Both public and private organizations recognized the increasing importance of EAH in the future. This should motivate the development of teaching methods and materials that aim at developing the understanding of animal health problems for the benefit of students and professional veterinarians.
2 Risk classification of livestock farms can help stakeholders design and implement risk manageme... more 2 Risk classification of livestock farms can help stakeholders design and implement risk management measures according to the possessed risk. Our goal is to examine how differently pig farms may contribute to the societal costs of an animal disease outbreak, how valuable this information is to different stakeholders, and how it can be used to target risk management measures. We show that the costs of an outbreak starting from a certain farm can be quantified for the entire sector using bio-economic models. In further studies, this quantified risk can be differentiated so that farms and slaughterhouses internalise the full cost of risk in production decisions and inhibit animal densities, animal contact structures or other characteristics which pose a threat to the sector.
Rapid structural change and concentration of pig production in regions with most intensive produc... more Rapid structural change and concentration of pig production in regions with most intensive production has raised concerns about whether the risk of large-scale disease losses has increased in Finland. This paper examines the pig industry's losses due to classical swine fever (CSF) epidemics. The work is based on economic and epidemiological models providing insights to the consequences of epidemics to infected and uninfected farms, government and meat processing. The economic analysis was carried out by use of a sector model, which simulated the recovery of pig production, starting from the recognition of the disease in the country and ending at a steady-state market equilibrium about 12 years later. The model explicitly took into account profit-maximising behaviour of producers and the effects of decrease in export demand.
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral epizootic disease of cloven-footed anim... more Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral epizootic disease of cloven-footed animals, which is controlled both by domestic and EU legislation. FMD has not been found in Finland since 1959.
Education on the use of economics applied to animal health (EAH) has been offered since the 1980s... more Education on the use of economics applied to animal health (EAH) has been offered since the 1980s. However, it has never been institutionalized within veterinary curricula and there is no systematic information on current teaching and education activities in Europe. Nevertheless the need for economic skills in animal health has never been greater. Economics can add value to disease impact assessments; improve understanding of people's incentives to participate in animal health measures; and help refine resource allocation for public animal health budgets. The use of economics should improve animal health decision making. An online questionnaire was conducted in European countries to assess current and future needs and expectations of people using EAH. The main conclusion from the survey is that education in economics appears to be offered inconsistently in Europe, and information about the availability of training opportunities in this field is scarce. There is a lack of harmonization of EAH education and significant gaps exist in the veterinary curricula of many countries. Depending on whether respondents belonged to educational institutions, public bodies, or private organizations, they expressed concerns regarding the limited education on decision making and impact assessment for animal diseases or on the use of economics for general management. Both public and private organizations recognized the increasing importance of EAH in the future. This should motivate the development of teaching methods and materials that aim at developing the understanding of animal health problems for the benefit of students and professional veterinarians.
2 Risk classification of livestock farms can help stakeholders design and implement risk manageme... more 2 Risk classification of livestock farms can help stakeholders design and implement risk management measures according to the possessed risk. Our goal is to examine how differently pig farms may contribute to the societal costs of an animal disease outbreak, how valuable this information is to different stakeholders, and how it can be used to target risk management measures. We show that the costs of an outbreak starting from a certain farm can be quantified for the entire sector using bio-economic models. In further studies, this quantified risk can be differentiated so that farms and slaughterhouses internalise the full cost of risk in production decisions and inhibit animal densities, animal contact structures or other characteristics which pose a threat to the sector.
Rapid structural change and concentration of pig production in regions with most intensive produc... more Rapid structural change and concentration of pig production in regions with most intensive production has raised concerns about whether the risk of large-scale disease losses has increased in Finland. This paper examines the pig industry's losses due to classical swine fever (CSF) epidemics. The work is based on economic and epidemiological models providing insights to the consequences of epidemics to infected and uninfected farms, government and meat processing. The economic analysis was carried out by use of a sector model, which simulated the recovery of pig production, starting from the recognition of the disease in the country and ending at a steady-state market equilibrium about 12 years later. The model explicitly took into account profit-maximising behaviour of producers and the effects of decrease in export demand.
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Papers by J. Niemi