Economic Consequences

Monetary losses due to paratuberculosis have been difficult to quantify. Due to the unknown magnitude of subclinical effects, as well as the inability to determine true prevalence, economic studies have been at best rough estimations and likely underestimate true costs.

Cost estimates of paratuberculosis are main­ly based on the reduced milk production, reduced carcass weights and increased disease susceptibil­ity; there is, however, also a potential public health concern. There have been numerous studies on the viability of MAP in processed food. MAP has been detected in both milk and meat products and can survive both high temperature short time (HTST) pasteurization and desiccation (Savi et al., 2015; McAloon et al., 2019) as well as processing of some meat products and, although it has been demonstrated that cooking meat to well done will render it free of the bacterium (Mutharia et al., 2010), its presence in the raw product is a con­cern.

Costs of implementing a paratuberculosis control programme must be balanced with dis­ease cost (Pillars et al., 2009). The most effective control programmes at reducing disease preva­lence are sometimes not the most economical (Webb Ware et al., 2012; Smith et al., 2017). Cost-benefit analysis often shows poor eco­nomic benefit to utilizing control programmes especially in low-prevalence herds (Collins and Morgan, 1991; Wolf et al., 2014; Kirkeby et al., 2016). Some economic models predicted only minor benefit in instituting control measures, even with subsidies (Groenendaal and Wolf, 2008; Wolf et al., 2014). Chiu et al. (2018) re­ported that utilizing a test and cull strategy to control paratuberculosis was less economically beneficial compared with culling based off low production in herds known to have MAP; how­ever, these herds did not achieve eradication. Costs of culling cows as well as the low apparent prevalence of disease within the herd and the long lag until benefits of required management changes are evident are barriers to the adop­tion of paratuberculosis control programmes (Arrigoni et al., 2014; Cardwell et al., 2016; McAloon et al., 2017; Ritter et al., 2017).

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