Economic Losses from Animal Diseases and Parasites

A. V. NORDQUIST AND C. H. PALS.

DEATH losses from all causes in 1954 included more than 1.5 million cattle, 2.5 million calves, 4 million sheep and lambs, and 10.5 million hogs and pigs.

About 235 million chickens and 7.2 million turkeys died from diseases and other causes that year.

About 250,000 horses and mules and an unknown number of goats, and fur animals, domestic rabbits, and miscellaneous poultry also were lost.

The figures do not measure the full toll of animal diseases: The loss in production, feed, labor, and capital investment is tremendous every year.

Nor do official figures include the deaths of baby pigs and lambs, because estimates of losses relate only to those considered "saved," or raised to about weaning age. Another 30 million pigs and perhaps as many as 3.5 million lambs may have died before weaning. Occasional investigations have indicated losses of baby pigs at 20 to 35 percent of the number born and losses of baby lambs from all causes at 15 percent.

A few surveys have been made to obtain information on the importance of disease and parasites as a cause of death. A Minnesota survey disclosed about 58 percent of the deaths of turkeys in 1951 resulted from disease and parasites.

Earlier surveys in Missouri and Wisconsin showed the disease toll ranging from 27 to 80 percent of the deaths of various species of livestock and poultry. The surveys indicated that about 55 percent of the deaths resulted from disease.

The value of livestock and poultry that were lost in 1954 from all causes, roughly calculated, was more than 1 billion dollars. Death loss from diseases and parasites alone may have exceeded 500 million dollars.

Farmers are most keenly aware of the economic loss from livestock and poultry that die or suffer from illness severe enough to cut production rates or increase the costs of production. They are well aware of the expense of curing the sick animals or protecting animals against disease but less aware of the lower efficiency of production and lower quality of their products as a result of disease and parasites.

Economic loss is not confined strictly to farm operations, although losses discovered after livestock and poultry leave the farm have a way of being reflected in prices received by farmers. Sick animals create losses when they are transported from farm to market and handled at the markets and in packing and processing plants.

Hidden losses from disease and parasites in meat, hides, edible offal, and byproducts because of condemnations or lowered quality, when added to the economic loss from death and sickness on the farm and between the farm and the processor, reach a staggering total.

The best judgment of specialists in the Department of Agriculture on the extent of livestock and poultry losses was reported in Losses in Agriculture, a Preliminary Appraisal for Review, issued in June 1954. Annual losses of livestock and poultry from diseases, disorders, parasites, and insect pests for the period 1942-1951 were placed in that report at 2,420 million dollars.

The losses represented about 6 percent of the potential agricultural production and about 15 percent of the average annual value of farm marketings and home consumption of livestock and products. The publication pointed out that the potential return from nearly 20 million acres of cropland and 126 million acres of grassland was lost because of animal diseases, disorders, insect pests, and internal parasites and the downgrading of livestock products because of lowered quality.

Costs of controlling, combating, and preventing diseases may be charged to disease and parasites; so also a large part of the cost of protecting the public from unwholesome meat products.

Protective measures even extend beyond the boundaries of the United States the campaign against foot-and-mouth disease in Mexico after 1947 cost 134.5 million dollars net. Inspection of exports and imports of live animals cost 850 thousand dollars in 1954. The fight against vesicular exanthema disease in hogs involved nearly 4 million dollars in State and Federal indemnity payments to producers. One item of expense as an example was the visits inspectors had to make once a month to 14,000 premises to check a million hogs that were fed garbage, that being a cause of vesicular exanthema.

Besides the expenditures for foot-and-mouth disease and vesicular exanthema, Federal appropriations for the eradication of animal diseases amounted to 7.2 million dollars in 1954. In addition, State agencies spent approximately 23 millions of dollars; that sum included 5.7 million dollars spent to combat tuberculosis and 13.6 million dollars to fight brucellosis.

Deaths and sickness resulting from cattle diseases, including nutritional ailments, have inflicted losses in excess of 650 million dollars a year. Specialists judged the loss to cattle and calves at more than 400 million dollars and the loss in value of milk production at nearly 250 million dollars.

The value of the cattle that died from disease was believed to be around 90 million dollars. Bloat, leptospirosis, and mastitis were responsible for about four-fifths of the deaths of cattle.

Mastitis was responsible also for an additional production loss valued at 225 million dollars. Vibriosis cost nearly 140 million dollars; leptospirosis, more than l00 million dollars; and brucellosis, about 100 million dollars, including a control cost of about 14 million dollars. In addition, brucellosis causes sterility which, if included, would increase the dollar loss about 50 percent.