tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83131974588213853612024-02-18T19:42:52.172-08:00Animal Health ManagementWelcome to my animal health management blog. In this blog I will write findings of our research group on animal health management and animal health economics. Mostly my blogs are based upon scientific papers that we published or on presentations that we gave. You can see these items as summaries of our work. I hope this blog gives you some insight in the research work we are doing. Every blog contains links to more detailed info.Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-1580260579097876032018-02-02T15:10:00.002-08:002018-02-02T19:41:02.510-08:00Selective dry cow therapy<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It has been a while (long while) since I made
an entry in this blog. All a result of a little too much other work. However,
yesterday I heard that a recently <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030217311098" target="_blank">published paper by Christian Scherpenzee</a>l,
co-authored by Theo Lam, Luuk Maas (at that time an MSc student at Wageningen
University, who created the first model) and myself, was chosen to be the
Editor’s choice of the Journal of Dairy Science. That is great to hear of
course and a reason to write another entry for this blog. Maybe a start of new
activity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Optimizing dry cow therapy</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The paper aimed to develop a mathematical model
to look at optimal selection rules within a selective dry cow treatment
situation. The linear programming model
could minimize the costs of mastitis associated with the dry period. This is
done because there is a tradeoff between the costs of dry cow treatment and the
costs of clinical mastitis in early lactation. We added an extra constraint:
amount of allowed daily doses of AB. The model did show which cows (based upon
somatic cell count at the end of lactation) should be treated with dry cow
antibiotics given the constraints that we brought in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Costs of clinical and subclinical mastitis as
well as antimicrobial use were quantified. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Based on data from a large field trial, a linear
programming model was built with the goal to minimize the costs associated with
antimicrobial use at drying off. The basic calculations were done on an ‘average’
example herd with different levels of b</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ulk tank somatic cell count. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Economically optimal use of antimicrobials was determined </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">while restricting the maximum percentage of cows dried
of with antimicrobials from 100% to 0%. This restriction reveals the
relationship between the maximum percentage of cows dried off with antibiotics and
the economic consequences.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></div>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Blanket dry cow therapy is not economically optimal</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From an economic
perspective, blanket dry cow treatment seems not to be the optimal approach of dry
cow therapy, although differences between approaches were small. A thing we
already knew because of the publications of <a href="http://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(07)71611-9/abstract" target="_blank">Huijps et al.</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-dairy-research/article/decision-tree-analysis-to-evaluate-dry-cow-strategies-under-uk-conditions/6DB006854D44E93163BAB5E4DFDB858C" target="_blank">Berry et al.</a> in
the early 2000’s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With lower bulk tank somatic cell counts, more dry cow antimicrobials
can be omitted without economic consequences.
The economic impact of reducing the percentage of clinical mastitis was found
to be much larger than reducing the bulk tank somatic cell count. The optimal
percentage of cows to be dried off with antimicrobials depends on the udder
health situation, expressed as the bulk tank somatic cell count and the incidence
of clinical mastitis. So we concluded that e</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">conomics is not an argument against reduction of dry
cow antimicrobials by applying selective</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> dry cow treatment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Consequences of these economic results</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The economic differences between the optimum situation and blanket dry
cow therapy are, however, small. As are the economic differences if we reduce
the use of dry cow antibiotics further than the economic optimum. When we first
identified this (and presented at an NMC meeting already in 2003 when NMC
organized a special session on selective dry cow therapy during the annual
meeting in Fort Worth, TX), the general choice in the veterinary world was to
go for better udder health and accept the small economic difference in
performance. Given societal discussions about the use of antibiotics in animal
(and dairy) farming, in some countries, such as the Netherlands, selective dry
cow therapy is embraced to reduce the use of antibiotics. </span></div>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The debate continues......</span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The discussion about selective dry cow therapy is
being held in many countries and at many meetings, as well as in the NMC annual
meeting that is held right now, in Tucson AZ. At that meeting a few different viewpoints were selected. Daryl Nydam (Cornell University) pleaded for the introduction of selective dry cow therapy, underbuilding that with an experiment where they found no differences in clinical mastitis and milk production in selected cows dried off only with teat sealant versus cows dried of with teat sealant in combination with antibiotics. Larry Fox (Washington State University), on the other hand, pleaded that we have to be very selective with selective dry cow therapy. With an overview of literature he concludes that blanket dry cow therapy is, although not with much difference, still better in guaranteeing good udder health after calving than selective dry cow therapy. Tine van Werven (Utrecht University) showed the results of the Dutch experience (country wide experiment) after the forced reduction of the use of antibiotics of 70 %. Not only the use of dry cow treatment reduced, also lactational treatment reduced. One could expect an decrease in udder health, but the bulk milk somatic cell count in 2017 is at an all time low (on average for the whole country). 17 % of the farms seem to not use any dry cow treatments anymore. These farms also had the lowest lactational use of antibiotics. All in all, selective dry cow therapy seems to be very well possible. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Scott McDougal (Cognosco) presented an outlook from the New Zealand perspective. In New Zealand the veterinary association has stated that in 2020 dry cow therapy will only be used in the treatment of existing intramammary infections. There has been emphasis on selective dry cow therapy earlier, with (at least partly) a negative effect on bulk milk somatic cell count. Practical issues (very high numbers of cows to dry off in one day) make the application of selective dry cow therapy also difficult. It seems taking the last cow SCC before drying off is as good as other selection algorithms using cow records and cow SCC. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<h2>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">My opinion</span></h2>
</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you want to be on the safe side and maximize udder health, go for blanket dry cow therapy it is proven effective. But, if you want to reduce the use of antibiotics on you dairy farms (for instance to meet societal expectations and/or for the principle of prudent use of antibiotics), the introduction of selective dry cow therapy is an easy start, and you save some money as well. And finally, blanket dry cow therapy may never be a tool to compensate lousy dry cow management and housing. </span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-44330910161187231272016-06-13T05:58:00.001-07:002016-06-13T05:59:55.815-07:00Evaluating dairy cow welfare with sensors<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At the moment I am, together others in the Organizing Committee, working on the last details for the First <a href="http://www.precisiondairyfarming.com/2016" target="_blank">International Precision Dairy Farming Conference</a>, that we are going to organize from 21-23 June in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Worldwide, there is quite some attention for precision technology. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the interesting
aspects of precision technology is that their use can move beyond the farm yard.
The information gathered by some of these sensor system can be very useful
along the value chain. An example of such use is animal welfare. Our consumers
more and more demand not only a fresh and healthy dairy product, but also a
dairy product that is produced by cows taken well care of. Large food companies
start bringing programs in place where improved
welfare is more and more demanded. Some years ago I talked to people of
<a href="https://www.frieslandcampina.com/en/quality-and-safety/foqus/" target="_blank">FrieslandCampina</a> and they indicated that these large customers demand prove for
the product specifications. How do you prove the welfare of cows?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, a large majority of farmers care for their animals, but we all know that some farmers are not taking very
good care of their animals. How do you know as dairy industry. Well, maybe
sensor technology can be used for that. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">For instance, an
important indicator of dairy cow welfare is the time they are lying. Cows need
lying time. Proper amounts of lying time are a sign that there is no overstocking
(in terms of cows per cubicle) and that the comfort of the cubicles is good
etc. 3D accelerometers (those are the sensors we all have in our mobile phones
and that detect in what direction you move your phone) are used and
successfully marketed to detect oestrus. However, these sensors can also be
used to evaluate the lying time of cattle. If a leg is horizontal, the cow is
probably lying, but not always. She might be scratching for instance. Akke Kok,
a PhD student of whom I am one of the supervisors, is using 3D accelerometer
sensors to evaluate lying time of dairy cattle and she wanted to validate
whether the lying bouts as recorded by the IceQube sensor were correct.
Moreover, she wanted to determine a threshold to define whether a horizontal
leg means lying or not. That work has recently been published in the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030215006219" target="_blank">Journal of Dairy Science</a>.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Now to evaluate the accuracy of sensor systems, normally you have to create a golden standard: sit down in the barn and
observe all cows while writing down when cows are lying or not. Then you
compare the sensor readings with this gold standard. Akke took an interesting
different approach. She equipped both hind legs of 28 lactating dairy cows with
an <a href="http://www.icerobotics.com/products/#sensors" target="_blank">IceQube </a>sensor for a period of 6 days and used the two sensors as each
other’s validation. Classification of lying bout records as true (actual LB) or
false (recorded while standing) was based on three assumptions. First, all
standing records were assumed to occur whilst standing. Second, false lying
bout records due to short leg movements could not occur in both hind legs
simultaneously. Third, true lying bouts only occurred if the records of the
paired sensors coincided. Based on maximum accuracy, a minimum duration of lying
bout records of 33 seconds was determined, with an accuracy of 0.992, a
sensitivity of 0.993 and a specificity of 0.977. Applying the threshold hardly
affected estimates of daily lying time, but improved estimates of frequency and
mean duration of LBs for individual cows. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">All in all, an
interesting application to use sensors as their own gold standard. Now let’s
see how and when dairy processors become interested in these types of data to
guarantee welfare of animals throughout the value chain.</span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-34131806428735737572015-11-04T05:39:00.001-08:002015-11-04T05:41:07.145-08:00Farmers want to improve animal health. Really?<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Improving
animal health status is important since consumers are becoming more critical
towards the products they buy. This is even more true for the organic dairy
sector were consumers expect a better animal health status compared to the
conventional dairy sector. Currently organic dairy farmers in the European
Union fail to reach an animal health status which is significantly better than
their conventional counterparts, see for instance this paper. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">The
expertise and knowledge of veterinary advisors plays a vital and crucial role
in improving animal health status on dairy farms. At the same time, most
veterinary advisors only advice on their own restricted field of expertise and
might be confronted with, what they experience as, dairy farmers who remain
incompliant with the given advice. From the perspective of the dairy farmer the
decision to do so might be very logical as he/she has to manage the entire farm
and priorities are given elsewhere. Insights in how organic dairy farmers
prefer animal health in relation to other farm activities is vital information
to veterinary advisors as it might reveal why their advice is adopted or not. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Within the EU project <a href="http://www.impro-dairy.eu/index.php/en/" target="_blank">IMPRO</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixvansoest" target="_blank">Felix van Soest</a> is working on social-economic aspects of improving health on organic dairy farms. It is his PhD project. To explore the preference of organic dairy farmers towards improving health management in relation to other management area's he </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">used a method, called adaptive conjoint analysis. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">To do so he made a simplification of reality in which he
assumed that farm management consisted of five common management areas. Two of
these represented udder health management and claw health management, thereby
representing animal health management. The remaining three management areas
were barn management, calf management and pasture management and represented “competing”
management areas. A total of 71 French, 60 German, 28 Spanish and 57 Swedish
organic dairy farmers completed the questionnaire.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">The results of the work are described in a <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9966631&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S175173111500141X" target="_blank">paper published in Animal</a>. I am proud that the paper is the paper of the month November. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";">In his research, Felix found
that the preference of the farmers varied substantially towards the different
management areas. This variation in preference could not be explained by any of
the routinely collected farm data, e.g. herd size, health problems or milk
production Notably, most farmers did not give the highest preference score
towards animal health management. The majority of farmers gave the highest
score to calf management which was mainly motivated by a high preference for
appropriate colostrum supply and a low preference for measuring chest girth of
all youngstock.<br />
<br /><br />
Insights in the individual dairy farmers' preferences is valuable information for (veterinary) advisors. It shows that to most farmers, animal health management is not the most preferred management area and explains why farmers remain incompliant with veterinary advice. This should motivate veterinary advisors to further back-up their advice by showing the potential benefits, either economic or technical, to the dairy farmers. On the other hand, it shows that the methodology used in our study is a good method to explore dairy farmers' motivations. </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-66996282593054618482015-08-04T00:21:00.000-07:002015-08-04T00:21:40.096-07:00Use and effectivity of sensor systems<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Precision
dairy farming is on the rise. For instance, in the Netherlands 19 % of the
dairy farmers are milking with a milking robot. I am travelling home from the <a href="http://precisiondairyfarming.com/2015" target="_blank">3rdNorth American conference on Precision Dairy Farming</a>, held in Rochester, MN
(just as 2 years ago). I heard there that automatic milking is now really gaining momentum. One of the major brand of milk robots told me they were </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
working over hours to produce all new systems that are to be installed in North
America. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We had an
interesting meeting in Rochester, mostly aimed at dairy farmers and extension
workers. Marcia Endres (University of Minnesota) took the initiative for the
meeting and did the main part of the organization together with Jeffrey Bewley
(University of Kentucky). That meant that besides a number of academic
presentations there were quite a number of more practical presentations.
Farmers that presented their use of sensor systems and automation. The striking similarity between the farmers, who all seemed to be quite successful in the application of precision dairy farming systems, was that they all spent
time behind the computer. They liked and worked with the information they could gain from the system. In order to successfully use precision dairy
technology, you need to learn to use the system and spend daily time behind the
screen. Precision dairy farming is more than only replacing labour with computers. Besides, you need to know your cows as well. You have to learn to link
the information on the screen to the real life of the cows. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Next year,
we are organizing the first truly <a href="http://www.precisiondairyfarming.com/2016/" target="_blank"><strong>International</strong> Conference on Precision Dairy farming</a>
in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. I am already looking forward to it. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the Rochester meeting I had the
honour to be invited to give the opening <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/2015-0624-precision-dairy-farming" target="_blank">presentation</a> and was asked to provide
insight in the situation in the Netherlands with regard to precision dairy
farming. The slides of my presentation can be found on slideshare. Besides
developments in of the Dutch dairy sector, the use of automatic milking systems
and the Smart Dairy Farming project, results of two recently published papers
of Wilma Steeneveld were used. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030214007863" target="_blank">first paper</a>, the use of sensor systems, both on farms with an automatic milking
system as on farms with a conventional milking systems was investigated,
alongside with reasons that farmers had to invest in these systems and the use
of these systems. The study was done in co-operation with Accon-AVM, a large
agricultural accountancy firm. Questionnaires were sent out to 1,672 farmers.
In total, 512 responded. Of these 512, 212 (41 %) had a sensor system on their
farm. Because we can expect a response bias (you are less tempted to respond to
a questionnaire about sensor systems if do not have such a system), the
proportion of Dutch dairy farmers with sensor systems is most likely lower than
41 %. It became apparent that especially in the last couple of years, farmers
deliberately invested in sensor systems for estrus detection and rumination
measurements. But it became also clear that quite some farmers have sensors on
their farm that they did not deliberately choose for. They were a part of the
new milking system. Consequently, these systems are not very well used. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030215002258" target="_blank">second paper</a>, the effect of sensor systems on milk production, days to first
service and somatic cell count of the herd was evaluated. Data on production,
health and reproduction over the years 2003-2013 was available for 414 of the
512 farms that responded, divided over farms with sensors in combination with an
automatic milking system (n=103), with sensor systems in combination with a conventional
milking system (n=49) and farms without (n=262) sensor systems. Having sensor
systems was associated with a higher average production per cow on farms with
an automatic milking system, and with a lower average production per cow on
farms with a conventional milking system in the years after investment. Farms
with an automatic milking system had on average 12,000 cells/ml higher somatic
cell count after adoption of the sensor system whereas farms with a
conventional milking system had on average 10,000 cells/ml lower somatic cell
count. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Other developments in the Netherlands that are more than worth mentioning is the <a href="http://www.smartdairyfarming.nl/nl/" target="_blank">Smart Dairy Farming project</a>. Besides work on precision dairy farming applications for reproduction, young stock rearing and metabolism, the most interesting and intriguing work is aimed at sharing of data. There is an enormous amount of data collected on dairy farms. The dairy farmer owns these raw data, but in practise they can only be used by the equipment collecting the data. There will be such more value in these data when others, after permission of the farmer, can use those data. This might give chain perspectives, such as the dairy industry being able to ensure the qualty of the production process as well as the feeding company being able to evaluate the effect of changes in the composition of composite feed. But also developers of decision support systems could be able to use data from multiple sources and thus make better applications. Interesting and challenging developments!!</span></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-7328794103804330322015-06-09T04:31:00.001-07:002015-06-09T04:31:58.553-07:00Inaugural lecture: Optimal management of animal health: Balancing between the interests of farmers and citizens<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Some of you might know that last year I was appointed as personal professor at Wageningen University. My chair is on Animal Health Management. It is a good habit in the Netherlands that newly appointed professors give an inaugural address, normally within a year after the appointment. Such an inaugural address is quite ceremonial and is a public event. The newly appointed professor gives his or her view on the research field and the role he or she wants to play in that field. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">I gave my inaugural address on June 4. It was in Dutch, since most of the audience was Dutch. The audience did consist not only of colleagues and work relations, but also of family and friends. </span></span><br />
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">For those who are interested, the full ceremony can be watched back at <a href="http://wurtv.wur.nl/p2gplayer/Player.aspx?id=WoLI1" target="_blank">WurTV</a>. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">The slides belonging to the inaugural address can be found <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/inaugural-address" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Soon, the English text will become available, including references. The Dutch text is provided underneath.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Optimaal
management van diergezondheid: Balanceren tussen de belangen van boeren en
burgers</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mijnheer de rector, collega’s, studenten, familie,
vrienden en alle overige aanwezigen. Welkom. Ik stel het bijzonder op prijs dat
u vanmiddag gekomen bent om mijn openbare lezing bij te wonen.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Enige jaren geleden stuurde een farmaceutisch bedrijf een
e-mail aan een aantal wereldwijd bekende mastitis experts met de vraag wat nu
een goede manier was om koeien te selecteren voor selectief droogzetten met
antibiotica. Ook ik kreeg deze e-mail. En de discussie die daaruit volgde is,
naar mijn idee, een prachtige illustratie van de titel van mijn rede namelijk
“Optimaal management van diergezondheid”, met als subtitel “Balanceren tussen
de belangen van boeren en burgers”. Op de gestelde vraag reageerde al snel een
uiterst vooraanstaande expert: de vraag naar selectief droogzetten was eigenlijk
een onzinnige vraag. Alle onderzoeken die er gedaan waren wezen maar één kant
op: selectief droogzetten leidt tot meer mastitis na het afkalven dan alle
koeien droogzetten met antibiotica. Selectief droogzetten leidt dus tot minder
gezonde koeien. De expert heeft hierin gelijk. Economisch gezien echter, kan
selectief droogzetten wel degelijk efficiënter zijn. Je weegt de kosten van het
gebruik van antibiotica voor alle koeien af tegen de kosten van enkele gevallen
van mastitis. Van maximale diergezondheid naar economisch optimale
diergezondheid dus. Recentelijk is de afweging nog een stukje complexer
geworden. Er is een relatie tussen het gebruik van antibiotica bij dieren en
antimicrobiële resistentie bij mensen. Er kwam veel publiciteit en politieke onrust
over het gebruik van antibiotica in de dierhouderij. De optimalisatie van
antibiotica gebruik rondom droogzetten kreeg dus ook een volksgezondheid aspect.
Inmiddels hebben veehouders en dierenartsen afgesproken dat het gebruik van
antibiotica substantieel verminderd zou worden. In Nederland is de sector
daarom nu overgegaan op het selectief droogzetten van koeien. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Nog niet zolang geleden was een productie-gebonden
aandoening, waarover de overheid en de zuivelindustrie vonden dat het een zaak
van de melkveehouders was en het hen niet aanging. Nu is mastitis veranderd is
in een aandoening die zowel boeren als burgers aan gaat. De aspecten die in dit
voorbeeld naar voren komen, spelen in meer of mindere mate voor bijna alle
dierziektes. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">In de komende 40 minuten zal ik ingaan op de
verschillende soorten dierziektes die we onderscheiden, op het management van die
dierziektes en de veranderende rol van de maatschappij. Ik zal de concepten
verbreden naar de situatie in het buitenland en ingaan op toekomstige
uitdagingen. Tenslotte zal ik nader ingaan op wetenschappelijke samenwerking en
de plek van mijn vakgebied in het onderwijs. </span></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Verschillende
soorten dierziektes</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Al heel erg lang houden mensen dieren. De doelen van de
dierhouderij en de wijze waarop dieren gehouden verschillen tussen culturen,
werelddelen en individuele mensen. Dieren worden gehouden voor de productie van
voedsel, vlees, melk en eieren. Dieren worden ook gehouden voor trekkracht en
als transportmiddel. In sommige culturen ligt het kapitaal van mensen vast in
hun vee. Dieren worden gehouden voor de sport en meer en meer produceren dieren
gezelschap en plezier. Alhoewel de principes die ik beschrijf in meer of
mindere mate voor alle diersoorten en doelen van dierhouderij gelden, zal ik me
in dit betoog beperken tot landbouwhuisdieren en dan met name de
melkveehouderij. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Laten we beginnen met een overzicht van de soorten
dierziektes. Er zijn vele manieren om dierziektes in te delen. Vanuit ons
vakgebied onderscheiden we drie soorten dierziektes. De meest in het oog
springende soort zijn de aangifteplichtige dierziektes. Vooral epizootische
ziektes zoals mond-en-klauwzeer, varkenspest en vogelgriep zijn bekend. Maar ook
minder ziektes zoals anthrax, Q koorts, blauwtong, rabiës en de ziekte van
Aujezsky staan op de lijst van aangifteplichtige dierziektes. De wereld
diergezondheidsorganisatie (OIE) heeft een lijst met aangifteplichtige
dierziektes samengesteld die is gebaseerd op mogelijke handelsbelemmeringen. De
Nederlandse overheid, via de NVWA heeft een eigen, iets kleinere lijst en die
bestaat uit die dierziektes waar Nederland vrij van wil zijn. Door de
besmettelijke aard van deze dierziektes, mogelijk in combinatie met effecten op
de volksgezondheid zijn deze dierziektes in het verleden bestreden. Het vrij
worden van de meeste van dit soort dierziektes was een kostbare aangelegenheid
omdat het gepaard ging met massale vaccinatie campagnes eventueel in combinatie
met stamping out strategieën. Als er weer een uitbraak is, moet deze bestreden
worden. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Een tweede soort zijn de endemisch besmettelijke
dierziektes. Dit zijn dierziektes die vaak wel voorkomen op de OIE lijst maar
niet op de Nederlandse lijst. Het zijn dierziektes waar individuele bedrijven
vrij van kunnen zijn maar waar de kans op herinfectie groot is omdat
buurtbedrijven niet vrij hoeven te zijn. Als een bedrijf besmet is, kunnen de
ziekteverschijnselen verschillen. De schade van deze dierziektes kan soms behoorlijk
oplopen maar is meestal niet desastreus. Hetzelfde geldt voor de gevolgen voor
de volksgezondheid. Voorbeelden van dit soort dierziektes zijn BVD, IBR, paratuberculose,
PRRSV en Salmonella. Voor veel van de endemisch besmettelijke dierziektes zijn
er vrijwillige bestrijdingsprogramma’s. Als bedrijven vrij zijn, worden ze
gecertificeerd en dit kan voordelen opleveren bij de verkoop van dieren. Het is
ook mogelijk dat besloten wordt tot een landelijk programma om een endemisch
besmettelijke dierziekte te bestrijden. De voordelen van een dergelijke
bestrijding liggen in een lager dierziekteniveau. Immers alle bedrijven zijn
vrij van de ziekte. Dat betekent ook dat de kans op herinfectie veel lager is. Veel
preventieve maatregelen om insleep te voorkomen of vaccinatie zijn dus niet
meer nodig. Het is vanzelfsprekend dat vrij zijn van dierziektes die de
volksgezondheid beïnvloeden goed is voor die volksgezondheid. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">De derde soort zijn de productie gebonden aandoeningen.
Dit zijn dierziektes die altijd op veebedrijven zullen zijn. Ze hangen als het
ware samen met de productie van vlees en melk. Er is een groot scala aan
factoren op het bedrijf die de incidentie en ernst van de ziekte kunnen beïnvloeden.
Er is een duidelijke samenhang met het management van het bedrijf. Er is een
groot verschil tussen bedrijven in incidentie of prevalentie van productie gebonden
dierziektes. Bijvoorbeeld, de prevalentie van dermatitis interdigitalis
(stinkpoot) varieert in Nederland tussen de 5 en 95 % en de tussenkalftijd (een
maat voor reproductie) varieert tussen 365 dagen en 600 dagen met een mediaan
van 405 dagen. De incidentie van mastitis varieert in Nederland ongeveer tussen
de 6 en 100 gevallen per 100 koeien per jaar.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Er is in onze maatschappij veel aandacht voor de
epizootische dierziektes. Bij een uitbraak kunnen dit soort dierziektes een
enorme impact op de dierhouderij hebben. Ze leiden tot heftige beelden op de TV
en kunnen leiden tot marktverstoringen. Daardoor hebben uitbraken een effect op
de prijzen tijdens de uitbraak en mogelijkerwijs ook nog na de uitbraak.
Bijvoorbeeld, de totale economische schade van de mond-en-klauwzeer uitbraak in
2001 wordt geschat op ruim 1 miljard Euro. Dat is veel. Gelukkig komt mond-en-klauwzeer
niet al te vaak voor. Stel dat er eens in de 10 jaar een uitbraak zou zijn, dan
is de gemiddelde schade per jaar 100 miljoen Euro, waarvan ongeveer 20% direct
door de veehouders wordt gedragen. Aan de andere kant, de geschatte jaarlijkse
schade ten gevolge van mastitis, een productie gebonden aandoening, zijn voor
het jaar 2009 geschat op 118 miljoen Euro en dat zijn alleen de faalkosten, de
kosten voor preventie zijn hier niet bij gerekend. . Schade die toch vrij
gemakkelijk geaccepteerd wordt. Productie gebonden aandoeningen verdienen
daarom meer aandacht dan ze nu krijgen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">De niveau’s van
beslissingen</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Dierziekte management vindt plaats op verschillende
niveau’s. Het meest directe niveau is het individuele dier. Een stapje
algemener is het management op bedrijfsniveau. Het gaat hier bijvoorbeeld om
preventieve maatregelen en routinediagnostiek. Ook op sectorniveau worden
beslissingen genomen. Deels door afnemers, zoals slachterijen of melkverwerkers,
en deels door de gezamenlijke veehouders. Tenslotte worden er ook belangrijke
beslissingen genomen door de overheid. Maatregelen van de overheid zijn soms structureel,
bijvoorbeeld gericht op het bereiken van een bepaald niveau van dierenwelzijn
of volksgezondheid. Soms zijn ze ook tijdelijk, zoals rondom de bestrijding van
een uitbraak van een epizootische dierziekte, zoals recent bij de uitbraak van aviaire
influenza. Mijn collega dr Helmut Saatkamp is een specialist op het gebied van
epizootische dierziektes en ik zal hier dan ook niet verder op ingaan. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Management van
dierziektes op dierniveau</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Management van dierziektes op dierniveau is operationeel
van aard. Dit soort management gaat vaak via protocollen die zo nu en dan geëvalueerd
en eventueel aangepast worden. Ten behoeve van het opzetten van protocollen is
een stuk beslissingsondersteuning belangrijk. De ontwikkelingen in een relatief
nieuw vakgebied, de precisie veehouderij (of in het Engels: Precision Livestock
Farming) kunnen hier grote veranderingen brengen. De basis van deze technieken
wordt gevormd door sensoren, die bijvoorbeeld stoffen in melk meten, of die de
activiteit van dieren meten. Door deze metingen om te zetten in informatie (de
software) en eventueel te combineren met andere bedrijfsinformatie, kunnen
ziektes gedetecteerd worden. Dat laatste is niet eenvoudig omdat niet alleen ziektes
kunnen leiden tot, bijvoorbeeld, een verminderde activiteit. Ook willen we niet
te vaak alarm slaan. We willen bereiken dat dieren op de attentielijst ook echt
aandacht nodig hebben en tegelijkertijd willen we geen dieren missen die de
aandacht nodig hebben. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Momenteel wordt er nog gesproken over de zogenaamde
Standaard Operating Procedures gekoppeld aan de detectie van een dierziekte. Ik
wil echter van die term af. Met behulp van beslissingsondersteunende systemen kunnen
in de toekomst namelijk behandelingen op maat geadviseerd worden. We moeten
verder gaan dan “standard”. In Nederland lopen we op dit onderwerp voor. Een
voorsprong die onder andere een gezicht krijgt in het project Smart Dairy
Farming. In dit project staat het creëren van een infrastructuur die data uit verschillende
bronnen beschikbaar maakt centraal en werken veel kennisinstellingen en
bedrijven samen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">In dit kader is het ook prachtig dat we in 2016 het
eerste internationale congres op het gebied van Precision Dairy Farming
organiseren in Leeuwarden. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Management van
dierziektes op bedrijfsniveau</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ook op bedrijfsniveau moet in de eerste plaats een
dierziekte onderkend worden maar dan in termen van incidentie of prevalentie. Voor
dierziektes met duidelijke klinische verschijnselen is dat relatief eenvoudig. Dierziektes
kunnen daarnaast vaak ook een subklinische verschijningsvorm hebben. Je ziet
niets aan het dier maar het heeft wel een ziekte onder de leden. Toch is het
belangrijk om ook het niveau van subklinische aandoeningen op een te weten. Ze
kunnen namelijk tot forse economische schade leiden. Technieken en sensoren uit
de precisieveehouderij kunnen ook hier een belangrijke rol spelen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Niet alleen de incidentie en prevalentie van dierziektes
zijn belangrijk, maar ook inzicht in de hoeveelheid productieverliezen en de
waarde hiervan. Voor de Nederlandse situatie is uitgebreid gerekend aan de
schade ten gevolge van een aantal productieaandoeningen. In het quotumloze
tijdperk wordt de gemiddelde schade van mastitis geschat op € 130 per koe per
jaar en voor een verminderde reproductie € 54 per koe per jaar. Schadeberekeningen
voor metabole stoornissen zijn nog niet bekend, hier wordt op dit moment aan
gewerkt en de schadeberekeningen voor klauwgezondheid moeten nog aangepast
worden aan het quotumloze tijdperk. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Deze schadebedragen zijn gemiddeldes. En zoals ik al
eerder aangaf, er is een grote variatie in incidentie en prevalentie van
productiegebonden aandoeningen. Daarnaast is er ook nog eens variatie in
schadebedragen en effecten. De variatie in economische schade tussen bedrijven
is enorm. In een recente studie varieerde de schade van mastitis op
verschillende bedrijven tussen de 14 Euro en 180 Euro per koe per jaar. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Berekeningen van de economische schade van dierziektes
zullen dus specifiek voor het individuele bedrijf gemaakt moeten worden. Inmiddels
zijn er een aantal stand-alone tools beschikbaar om de bedrijfsspecifieke
kosten van een aantal productieaandoeningen in te schatten. Ik pleit er voor
dat de managementpakketten die gebruikt worden door veehouders en hun
diergezondheidsadviseurs dit soort bedrijfsspecifieke berekeningen integreren.
Zo kunnen deze mede gebruikt worden bij het vaststellen van het jaarlijkse
diergezondheidsplan. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Nadat het probleem in beeld is, zullen mogelijke beheersmaatregelen
bekend moeten zijn, inclusief de kosten van die maatregelen en de verwachtte
effecten. Zeker bij productiegebonden aandoeningen is er een veelheid aan
mogelijke maatregelen waarbij de effecten ook nog eens zullen verschillen
tussen bedrijven, afhankelijk van de structuur van het bedrijf en de
vakbekwaamheid van de veehouder. De veehouder en zijn veterinair adviseur zullen
de kosten van preventieve maatregelen in combinatie met de verwachte
effectiviteit in balans moeten brengen met de economische verliezen van deze
dierziektes. Hierbij spelen de doelstellingen van de veehouder en de
beschikbare middelen een belangrijke rol. Hierbij spelen de doelstellingen van
de veehouder en de beschikbare middelen een belangrijke rol.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Of met andere woorden: de totale kosten van dierziektes,
bestaande uit de faalkosten en de preventieve kosten moeten geminimaliseerd
worden. Vanwege het afnemende effect is van extra preventieve maatregelen is er
een optimum. Te weinig preventie is niet goed omdat faalkosten dan relatief
sneller stijgen dan de besparing op preventie. Te veel preventie is ook niet
economisch optimaal omdat de faalkosten dan minder hard dalen in vergelijking
met de stijgende preventiekosten. Een dergelijke situatie geeft natuurlijk wel
gezondere dieren, minder gedoe met dierziektes en een beter welzijn. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Beslissingen over endemische besmettelijke dierziektes worden
ook vaak op bedrijfsniveau genomen. Ook hier geldt natuurlijk dat inzicht in de
situatie een startpunt is. Op basis van koppeldiagnostiek kan het bedrijf vrij,
onverdacht, of niet vrij verklaard worden voor een ziekte. De veehouder heeft
een beperkt aantal keuze opties. Behalve niets doen kan er besloten worden tot
eradicatie of vaccinatie. Een economisch optimale beslissing nemen is echter
niet eenvoudig. De baten van maatregelen, in de vorm van de voorkomen faalkosten
zijn lastig te bepalen. We hebben een slecht zicht de dynamiek van deze ziektes
binnen een specifiek bedrijf. Wat is de kans op een flare-up van de ziekte? De
kosten van eradicatie zijn ook moeilijk in te schatten omdat vooraf niet bekend
is hoeveel dragers er op een bedrijf zijn. Vervolgens is het mogelijk dat als
een bedrijf vrij is, er weer een herinfectie op treedt. Toch zouden voor dit
soort aandoeningen beslissingsondersteunende systemen beschikbaar moeten zijn.
Deze systemen moeten voor individuele veehouders, op basis van hun
bedrijfssituatie inzicht geven in de mogelijke kosten en baten van de diverse
opties rondom endemische besmettelijke dierziektes. Dit soort systemen zijn er
nu niet.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Op een heel ander niveau wordt er ook besloten over
endemisch besmettelijke dierziektes. Op sector niveau. Er zijn landen die van
een aantal van dergelijke ziektes vrij zijn. Vooral Scandinavische landen lopen
voorop in het vrij zijn van dit soort dierziektes en dat is niet voor niets. Deze
landen hebben door hun ligging en handelsstructuur relatief weinig kans op
insleep van dierziektes, de landen hebben een sterke collectieve sector en
relatief veel overheidsbemoeienis met dierziektes. In Nederland is onlangs
besloten tot een sectorbrede aanpak van IBR en BVD. De inhoud van deze aanpak
is nog niet duidelijk. Een goede ex-ante epidemiogisch-economische modellering
van verschillende opties tot bestrijding is hierbij van groot belang. Bij de
uitkomsten moet niet alleen gekeken worden naar de totale kosten en baten, maar
zeker ook naar de verdeling van kosten en baten over bedrijven. Als bedrijven
relatief hoge kosten hebben en relatief weinig baten zullen deze bedrijven
duidelijk minder gemotiveerd zijn om mee te werken aan bestrijding. Voor een
succesvolle aanpak zouden alle bedrijven bewust en met overtuiging mee moeten
doen. Onbekend is wat hiervoor nodig is. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">De rol van de
maatschappij</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">In de afgelopen decennia is de veehouderij veranderd.
Bedrijven zijn gegroeid, het aantal dieren per veehouder nam toe, stalsystemen
veranderden, er kwam meer automatisering en het aantal veehouders nam sterk af.
Daardoor werd de afstand van de burger tot de veehouderij veel groter. Ook de
houding van de burger naar het houden van dieren is sterk veranderd. Er is veel
meer aandacht voor dierenwelzijn en de maatschappij vindt het meer en meer
belangrijk dat dieren in een zo natuurlijk mogelijke omgeving gehouden worden. Nog
niet eens zo lang geleden ging het over goedkoper vlees en zuivel. Nu gaat het
meer en meer om betaalbaar vlees en zuivel (een beetje duurder mag wel)
geproduceerd door gezonde en gelukkige dieren. Dierenwelzijn wordt dus
belangrijker. De kwaliteit van het product bestaat niet alleen maar uit het
zichtbare en proefbare deel van het product maar ook uit de onzichtbare wijze
van productie. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">In de wetenschap en in de maatschappij krijgt de
samenhang tussen diergezondheid en volksgezondheid een steeds vastere plek met
de “One health” benadering. Onlangs heeft de voorzitter van onze raad van
bestuur, prof. Fresco, in Seoul een white paper gepresenteerd, voorbereid door
een groep Wageningse experts, waarin het One health principe verder is uitgewerkt
naar een “Global one health” de samenhang tussen diergezondheid, voeding en
volksgezondheid. Technische aspecten spelen hier een belangrijke rol: hoe zit het
met die samenhang tussen dierziektes en volksgezondheid, hoe verspreiden ziektes
zich, wat is de samenhang met dieren in de natuur en hoe zit het met de
voedselvoorziening, onder- en overvoeding. Maar, het gaat in dit veld ook over
inzet van schaarse middelen en gedrag van mensen. Sociaal-economische aspecten maken
daarom ook een integraal onderdeel uit van de Global one health benadering. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Hoewel belangrijke zoönotische aandoeningen in Nederland gelukkig
allang bestreden zijn, blijft de volksgezondheid een rol spelen bij
beslissingen over dierziektes. Bij iedere nieuwe dierziekte die optreedt is één
van de eerste vragen natuurlijk of er effecten zijn op de volksgezondheid. Deze
mogelijkheid wordt steeds belangrijker bij de bestrijding, waarbij vaak uitgegaan
wordt van het voorzorgsprincipe. We moeten dan goed weten dat dat economische
consequenties heeft en we moeten nadenken over een verdeling van de kosten. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Naast de overheid gaat ook de verwerkende industrie
steeds meer letten op de wijze waarop melk en vlees zijn geproduceerd en kijkt
het naar mogelijke risico’s voor de gezondheid. Die interesse gaat verder dan
het rationele: imago is een belangrijke aspect van de interesse in
volksgezondheid. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">De volksgezondheids- en welzijnsaspecten van dierziektes
in combinatie met de veranderingen in onze maatschappij zorgen ervoor dat de
randvoorwaarden voor dierlijke productie verschuiven. De definitie van een
optimale diergezondheid zal dus ook verschuiven. Wat we 10 jaar geleden
optimaal vonden, is het nu niet meer, denk hierbij aan het voorbeeld waar ik
dit betoog mee begon: de toepassing van droogzet antibiotica. Het betekent ook
dat het voor de sector van belang is inzicht te hebben in de houding van de
maatschappij rondom bepaalde onderwerpen. Momenteel zien we dat met het denken
over levensduur van koeien. Economisch is de levensduur goed te vatten in
levensproductie en ja, een hoge levensproductie is efficiënt. Maar
maatschappelijk bedoelt men met levensduur levensjaren. Betere
diergezondheid<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>kan leiden tot beiden:
een hogere levensproductie en meer levensjaren. Dit is een echte win-win
situatie. Maar ons inzicht in afvoer is nog altijd beperkt. We weten niet goed waarom
koeien afgevoerd worden. We hebben ook maar ene zeer beperkt inzicht in de
denkwijze van veehouders rondom afvoer en levensduur. Inzicht wat wel nodig is
om maatregelen te nemen om de levensduur van melkvee te verlengen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ook hebben we nog maar weinig inzicht in de houding van
de maatschappij ten opzichte van het gebruik van nieuwe technologieën in de
veehouderij. Zonder dat inzicht is het voor de sector onmogelijk te anticiperen
op mogelijk maatschappelijk onbehagen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ik denk dat er een continu gesprek moet zijn tussen de
veehouderij sector en de maatschappij. Op lokaal niveau zijn er al allerlei
initiatieven, maar deze zouden veel systematischer kunnen worden aangepakt
zodat de kennis die we hier uit krijgen weer toegepast kan worden. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Buitenland</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ik heb in het voorgaande eigenlijk alleen maar gesproken
over de Nederlandse veehouderij, terwijl een steeds groter deel van ons
onderzoek gericht is op veehouderijsystemen in het buitenland. De principes
rondom een optimale diergezondheid zijn in het buitenland gelijk. Ook in
veehouderijsystemen die verder of soms zelfs mijlenver afstaan van de onze. Het
gaat om een inzet van schaarse middelen en het ondersteunen van beslissing
nemers. Ook hier willen kosten en baten van bestrijding van dierziektes
berekenen. Ook hier geldt dat inzicht in het denken en handelen van veehouders
belangrijk is. Ook hier willen we veehouders stimuleren vrijwillig een bepaalde
dierziekte aan te pakken. Soms hebben dierziektes een hele andere status. Mond-
en klauwzeer is in Ethiopië een endemisch besmettelijke dierziekte waarover
individuele veehouders besluiten wat ze er aan doen. Hetzelfde geldt voor hoog
pathogene aviaire influenza in Indonesië. Trypanosiomase in Kenia is een
productie aandoening, maar alleen wel een die verspreid wordt door de tse tse vlieg
wat betekent dat preventieve maatregelen moeilijker zijn dan voor sommige
andere aandoeningen. Campagnes tot vrij worden van rabiës in Indonesië en Ethiopië
zijn gericht op de vaccinatie van honden en is een afweging tussen de kosten van
de behandeling van mogelijk besmette mensen en de kosten om honden te
vaccineren. In veel van deze landen is de houding van de maatschappij ten
opzichte van de veehouderij een totaal andere dan in Nederland, maar er is veel
meer te winnen op het gebied van volksgezondheid dan in Nederland. Bedenk
bijvoorbeeld dat wereldwijd per jaar naar schatting 55,000 mensen overlijden
aan rabiës. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Uitdagingen in toekomstig
onderzoek</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ook in de toekomst richt mijn onderzoek zich op het
ondersteunen van beslissingen ten behoeve van een optimale diergezondheid. Veel
van dit werk zal blijven bestaan uit ex-ante berekeningen, berekeningen vooraf
om de kosten van dierziektes en de gevolgen van beslissingen te schatten. De
basis voor dit soort berekeningen wordt gevormd door bio-economische simulatie
modellen. Een rekenmodel wat gebaseerd is op de biologie van een dierziekte en
op basis waarvan economische berekeningen uitgevoerd worden. Dit soort
bio-economische modellen kunnen, afhankelijk van het dierziekteprobleem en het
niveau van beslissen, een aantal kenmerken hebben met betrekking tot dynamiek,
spatiëliteit, stochasticiteit en optimalisatie. In het verleden is er een scala
aan methodes gebruikt en hier zullen we zeker op voortbouwen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Er liggen uitdagingen om ten behoeve van precisie
veehouderij beslissingsondersteunende modellen op dierniveau te maken. Maatwerk
op dierniveau dus. Daarnaast zullen we aan de slag moeten met het ondersteunen
van afvoerbeslissingen. De sector heeft zich namelijk ten doel gesteld de levensduur
van koeien met 2 jaar te verhogen. Dat zal deels moeten gebeuren door een
betere diergezondheid en deels door betere beslissingen over het afvoeren van
koeien. Dat is een complex modelleer probleem, waar we moeten zoeken naar
alternatieve robuuste modelleertechnieken. Technieken die recht doen aan de
variatie die er is op individuele bedrijven op verschillende momenten en toch
een goede beslissing nemen voor ieder individueel dier.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Om de beslissing nemers op sectorniveau te ondersteunen,
zullen we moeten werken aan modelleertechnieken die een balans vinden tussen het
economische boerenbelang, dierenwelzijn en volksgezondheid. Er is wel eens
gewerkt met multicriteria analyse maar dat heeft als nadeel dat we de
verschillende aspecten vooraf in moeten wegen, terwijl we weten dat
verschillende stakeholders ook verschillende meningen hebben over die weging.
Onlangs hebben we onderzoek afgerond, waar we met behulp van data envelopment
analyse <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>een frontier konden opstellen
van de effecten van maatregelen op inkomen, dierenwelzijn en maatschappelijke
acceptatie. Dit was een eerste stap en ik zie veel mogelijkheden om hierop
verder te gaan. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Er is veranderende kijk van de maatschappij op de
veehouderij. Voor veehouders is het zoeken van maatschappelijke acceptatie belangrijk.
Daarom moeten veehouders werk maken van een goede diergezondheid en
dierenwelzijn. Het is niet meer alleen een zaak van de veehouder, het is een
zaak van de gehele sector. Het is dus belangrijk te weten hoe veehouders
reageren op bepaalde maatregelen en wat de motivatie van veehouders is om zaken
aan te pakken of juist niet. We hebben inmiddels al wat ervaring opgedaan met
het gebruik van concepten uit de sociale psychologie, zoals de theory of
planned behaviour en we zullen hierop voort moeten bouwen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Externe validatie van bio-economische modellen die
gebruikt worden voor ex-ante analyses is nog nauwelijks mogelijk geweest. Door
samenwerking met accountantskantoren is er nu ook de mogelijkheid om van grote
aantallen bedrijven bedrijfseconomische gegevens te koppelen aan
diergezondheidsgegevens. We kunnen dan een ex-post berekening maken van de
economische effecten van dierziektes of verbeterd dierziekte management. Op die
manier kunnen we onze ex-ante berekeningen valideren. Met behulp van methodes
uit de productie-economie, zoals stochastic frontier analyse is ook nog een
stap vooruit te maken met het evalueren van de efficiëntie van dierlijke
productie in relatie tot de genomen beslissingen rondom diergezondheid. Toch
zitten hier nog haken en ogen aan. Met een normatieve analyse hebben we recent,
op basis van afvoer en productiegegevens op een groot aantal melkveebedrijven, berekend
dat het netto resultaat van veterinaire bedrijfsbegeleiding zo’n 80 Euro per
koe per jaar was. Echter een ex-post economische studie op bedrijven met en
zonder veterinaire bedrijfsadvisering liet zien dat er geen verschil tussen de bedrijven
was in efficiëntie. Waarschijnlijk komt dit doordat bedrijven die meedoen aan
veterinaire bedrijfsbegeleiding niet alleen op dat vlak verschillen, maar ook
op een aantal andere vlakken en dat we niet voor al deze effecten konden
corrigeren. Als we dus alleen de ex-post berekening zouden doen zouden we
misschien wel verkeerde conclusies trekken.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">De ontvangst van dit onderzoek in de sector geeft een
ander aandachtspunt weer. De sector heeft kennis genomen van deze resultaten
door middel van een interview in de vakpers over bedrijfsadvisering met als boodschap
“Bedrijven in met bedrijfsbegeleiding doen het niet perse beter”. In een
on-line forum werd de kop al “bedrijfsbegeleiding kan niet uit” en in een ander
vakblad was de kop: “Boer beter af zonder dierenarts”. Blijkbaar wil men wel
graag horen dat er niet teveel aandacht aan diergezondheid gegeven moet worden.
Tot nu toe hebben we een verbetering in diergezondheid vooral willen motiveren
met een economische argumentatie. We weten inmiddels dat veehouders meer doelen
hebben dan alleen winstmaximalisatie. Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat veehouders zeker
niet zullen kiezen voor maatregelen die netto verlies geven. We zullen
economische consequenties van verbeterde diergezondheid dus altijd moeten
weten. Maar voor de sector zullen we de boodschap misschien toch anders moeten
brengen: Gezondere dieren geeft beter welzijn, betere acceptatie door de
maatschappij en het kost niets, sterker nog, het levert zelfs iets op. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Tenslotte wordt het belangrijk om te zien hoe een heel
systeem omgaat met veranderingen. Agent based modelling lijkt een prachtige
methode om het gedrag van een heel veehouderijsysteem te voorspellen. Hiermee
kunnen we kennis over de epidemiologie, economie en het gedrag van veehouders
bij elkaar brengen om te zien wat er met een dierziekte en de verspreiding
daarvan gebeurt onder verschillende omstandigheden. De eerste stapjes met deze
methode zijn gezet en ik kijk uit naar verder werk op dit vlak.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Samenwerking</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Het vakgebied management van diergezondheid is van
oudsher al een interdisciplinair vakgebied. Redenerend vanuit de bedrijfseconomie
was veterinair klinische en epidemiologische kennis van dierziektes
noodzakelijk om hieraan te werken. Het vakgebied is alleen maar complexer
geworden en de interdisciplinariteit is dus nog belangrijker. Dat betekent dat
samenwerking steeds belangrijker wordt. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ons onderzoek heeft altijd een sterke inbedding gehad in
de leerstoelgroep Bedrijfseconomie onder leiding van prof. Alfons Oude Lansink.
Ik vind die inbedding belangrijk en de toepassing van nieuwe methodes uit het
gebied van productie economie is een voorbeeld van de meerwaarde die deze
inbedding geeft.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Wat betreft de epidemiologie is binnen Wageningen
University een vanzelfsprekende partner de groep kwantitatieve veterinaire
epidemiologie van prof. Mart de Jong. Ik kijk uit naar een hernieuwde
samenwerking met prof. Ynte Hein Schukken die onlangs bij deze leerstoelgroep
benoemd is tot hoogleraar Management van Diergezondheid, vanuit epidemiologisch
perspectief. Ik ben blij dat ik verbonden blijf aan het department
Gezondheidszorg Landbouwhuisdieren van de Faculteit Diergeneeskunde. De
samenwerking met prof. Arjan Stegeman en Hans Heesterbeek is altijd goed
geweest en er is daar een enorme klinische en epidemiologische kennis van
dierziektes. Er ligt ook een duidelijke connectie met het Utrechtse centrum
voor Evidence based veterinary medicine, onder leiding van prof. Mirjam Nielen
en ik kijk naar het onderzoek dat we zullen opzetten op het gebied van
Veterinaire economie. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Het grotere belang van de burger rondom beslissingen over
diergezondheid heeft vorm gekregen in de samenwerking met prof. Elsbeth
Stassen, hoogleraar relatie mens en dier bij de leerstoelgroep
Adaptatiefysiologie. Deze samenwerking was belangrijk en zal alleen nog maar
belangrijker worden. Ook wil ik verdere invulling geven aan de samenwerking met
de leerstoelgroep Dierlijke productiesystemen van prof. Imke de Boer. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Om nieuwe modelleertechnieken te ontwikkelen zie ik goede
mogelijkheden om ons vakgebied vooruit te helpen door verder samen te werken
met de onlangs benoemde prof. Bedir Tekinerdogan bij de leerstoelgroep
Informatie technologie. Mogelijkheden liggen in nieuwe algoritmes om sensor
gegevens tot nuttige informatie en beslissingsondersteuning te brengen en in
modelleermethodes om het gedrag van hele veehouderijsystemen te simuleren. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Gezien het grotere belang van de analyse van het gedrag
van veehouders en andere beslissing nemers zullen we ook meer moeten
samenwerking met andere groepen uit de sociale wetenschappen, zoals sociaal
psychologen. Ik zie het als mijn taak als hoogleraar Animal Health Management om
deze samenwerkingen te initiëren en vorm te geven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Onderwijs</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">In Nederland zijn vele academisch geschoolde professionals
werkzaam op het gebied van diergezondheid. Deze professionals zouden allen
kennis moeten hebben van economische aspecten van diergezondheid. Dat kan
natuurlijk op verschillende niveaus, afhankelijk van de aard van hun
werkzaamheden. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">De meest in het oog springende professionals zijn hierbij
de dierenartsen. Dierenartsen, ook degene die zich alleen bezig houden met
gezelschapsdieren, zouden ook inzicht moeten hebben in de economische
consequenties van dierziektes en van veterinair handelen. Dierenartsen die zich
bezig houden met landbouwhuisdieren moeten hierin zeer zeker inzicht hebben. In
het EU netwerk project NEAT, een afkorting voor Networking to enhance the use
of economics in animal health education, wordt gewerkt aan nieuwe onderwijsmaterialen
voor deze doelgroep. Onze groep speelt hier een vooraanstaande rol in. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ook maak ik me sterk voor de oprichting van een
Internatinale organisatie die congressen kan organiseren op het gebied van
Economics of Animal Health. In bestaande internationale congressen komt dit
onderwerp namelijk niet voldoende in de aandacht en er is geen goed platform
waar jonge onderzoekers op dit vakgebied elkaar kunnen ontmoeten. In september
gaan we hier beslissingen over nemen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Al heel lang is er een intensieve samenwerking tussen de
Faculteit Diergeneeskunde en de leerstoelgroep Bedrijfseconomie van Wageningen
University. Zelf ben ik nog altijd 2 dagen in de week gedetacheerd op de
Faculteit. Ik ben blij met de benoeming van een universitair docent Veterinary
Economics op de Faculteit en ben ook blij dat ik vanaf 1 september nog altijd
één dag in de week bij de Faculteit Diergeneeskunde actief kan zijn om de band
tussen Wageningen en Utrecht vast te houden. Het zal het vakgebied ten goede
blijven komen.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Studenten dierwetenschappen aan Wageningen University
krijgen traditioneel gezien al de nodige economie in hun curriculum, veelal via
cursussen bedrijfseconomie. Onze groep heeft een gespecialiseerd vak over de Economie
van diergezondheid. Dit keuzevak maakt relatief beperkt deel uit van de
verschillende minors die onze universiteit kent. Dit kan beter. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Onze groep mag zich verheugen in een groot en groeiend
aantal studenten dat een thesis wil doen op het gebied van Management van
diergezondheid. Gelukkig kunnen we een goed aanbod bieden van onderwerpen die
actueel en relevant zijn, vaak in samenwerking met bedrijven of buitenlandse
universiteiten. Ik zal me hiervoor blijven inzetten. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Een ontwikkeling waar we ook verder mee moeten gaan is
e-learning. Vanwege zijn flexibiliteit in tijd en plaats, biedt deze vorm van
onderwijs grote voordelen. Vanuit de Faculteit Diergeneeskunde was ik al bezig
met twee e-learning cursussen en ik zou deze cursussen graag verder uitwerken
als een gezamenlijk Wagenings-Utrechts initiatief. Ook denk ik dat we zouden
moeten werken aan e-learning cursussen voor diergezondheidsprofessionals zoals
dierenartsen. Er liggen op dit vlak nog vele mogelijkheden en kansen. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Dankwoord</span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Daarmee ben ik bijna aan het einde van mijn rede. Ik hoop
dat ik de essentie van mijn vakgebied heb kunnen overdragen en we elkaar kunnen
vinden in de uitdagingen waar we voor staan. Ik wil de voorgaande rector
magnificus, prof. Martin Kropff en het college van promoties van Wageningen
University danken voor hun vertrouwen in mijn capaciteiten om het vakgebied
Management van Diergezondheid verder te brengen.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ik dank God de Heer voor talenten en mensen om mij heen. De
afgelopen 25 jaar heb ik op diverse plaatsen begeleiders en leidinggevenden
gehad en van iedereen heb ik iets geleerd. Jos Noordhuizen, Ynte Hein Schukken,
Norm Williamson en Aalt Dijkhuizen als scriptiebegeleiders tijdens mijn studie,
Arie Brand en Elsbeth Stassen als promotores bij mijn promotieonderzoek, Jos
Metz, Wim Hanekamp en Albert Meijering als leidinggevenden bij het voormalige
IMAG en praktijkonderzoek en Ruud Huirne en Alfons Oude Lansink bij de leerstoelgroep
Bedrijfseconomie. Deze mensen hebben mij kansen gegeven, uitgedaagd tot denken
en tot doen. Alfons heeft mij gestimuleerd om na een forse teleurstelling binnen
het tenure track syseem van Wageningen University <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>toch maar weer de moed op te vatten om de stap
naar persoonlijk hoogleraar te maken. Ik dank de wetenschappelijke en de
ondersteunende collega’s in Wageningen en Utrecht voor collegialiteit en het samen
de schouders eronder zetten. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mijn functie is nu hoogleraar, iemand die anderen iets
leert. Maar het mooie van dit beroep is dat je zelf veel leert. De laatste 10
jaar vooral door samen te werken met studenten, promovendi en postdocs. Zij
doen het werk en ik kijk mee en leer daar heel veel van. Ik ben blij met een
hele goede groep promovendi en postdocs tot nu toe: Francesca, Bouda, Tariq, Natasha,
Joanne, Kirsten, Wilma, Claudia, Erwin, Chaidate, Marielle, Marjolein, Tamara
en Norhariani, dank voor jullie samenwerking rondom successen en de
teleurstellingen, jullie inzet en creativiteit. Mooi ook om met nieuwe
promovendi verder te kunnen werken: Tassos, Niels, Wudu, Ewaldus, Jaap, Felix,
Esther, Sefinew, Tariku, Akke, Dikky en Zhuajou ik kijk uit naar verdere
discussies over methodes en interpretatie en naar de uiteindelijke verdediging
van jullie proefschriften. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ik ben grote dank verschuldigd aan mijn thuisbasis: Marijke,
Marc, Erwin, Elise en Gerlinde, voor de vrolijkheid, voor de saamhorigheid,
voor de gesprekken en voor de relativeringen. Tenslotte zijn er vele mensen die
met volle inzet werken en hun talenten inzetten en die niet als hoogleraar
centraal staan bij een inaugurele rede. Ook familie en schoonfamilie, bedankt
voor de interesse in de universitaire wereld. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ik wil eindigen met een klein stukje geschiedenis. Het
zal zo in 1954 geweest zijn dat een schoolmeester bij een kleine Veluwse boer
op bezoek ging. Zijn zoon kon eigenlijk best goed leren en kon best naar de HBS
gaan: “hij kan wel schoolmeester worden”. De boer vond dat allemaal maar niks.
De landbouwschool was goed genoeg en zo werd mijn vader veehouder en vond hij
het belangrijk dat zijn kinderen konden leren. Ma, jammer genoeg kan Pa dit niet
meer meemaken, maar jij bent er wel en ik dank jullie voor alle mogelijkheden
die jullie mij gegeven hebben. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Mijnheer de rector, dames en heren, dank voor uw
aandacht. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="NL" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Ik heb gezegd. </span></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-77475844241509874092015-05-13T05:38:00.002-07:002015-05-13T05:38:29.230-07:00Rabies<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Recently,
two papers were published by our group on <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs099/en/" target="_blank">Rabies</a>. Rabies is not the animal
health problem that we discuss often in this blog, but it is a serious animal
disease and more important: rabies is an important zoonosis. Still in 2015,
according to estimations from the <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61728-0/abstract" target="_blank">global disease burden study</a>, approximately 55,000 people die of rabies each
year. And more important and, in my personal opinion, striking: these deaths
can be prevented. We know how to control rabies. Many countries are free of
rabies, while even when a country is not free by vaccination or, as a last
resort, by post exposure prophylaxis (PEP), human casus can be prevented.</span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A study of Ewaldus Wera (from the Kupang State Agricultural Polytechnic and doing is PhD at Wageningen University) that was <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0083654" target="_blank">published</a> in 2013 showed that on Flores Island during the last 12 years in total $US 8.5 mln was spent on control of rabies in dogs. During the same period, a total of $US 4.8 mln was spent on PEP. In total an average of $US 1.1 mln per year. This is a large amount of money for an island with a population of approximately 1.8 mln people ($ 611 per person per year, where the average daily wage is not more than $ 5). </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By the establishment of good dog rabies control programs, the total costs of rabies (dog rabies control plus PEP) could be decreased. However, despite the amount of money spent, rabies is not (yet) controlled. </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A second study of Ewaldus has recently been published in <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003589" target="_blank">PLOS Neglected Diseases</a>. In this second study, 450 dog owners in two regions on Flores island were interviewed regarding the uptake of rabies control measures, which is despite the vaccination campaigns that were held not sufficient. The most important reasons to not join vaccination campaigns were a lack of information and the difficulty to catch the dogs during the campaign. Another interesting aspect was the accessibility of the village. Those villages with bad accessibility (which means that you cannot get ther by car, only by motorbike or foot) had a lower uptake of vaccination as well. This means that in the future, we have to think about the setup of vaccination campaigns: make sure that dog owners do receive enough information about the campaign and make sure that the campaign is held in such times that the dog owner is not in the field with his dog(s). </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A second PhD student working on rabies is Tariku Jibat. He is working on the <a href="http://www.aau.edu.et/cvma/" target="_blank">College of Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture</a>, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia and also doing his PhD work in our group in Wageningen. Tariku started later and is now in Ethiopia collecting his field data. However, he did recently publish a review on vaccination coverage rates in Africa in <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003447" target="_blank">PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases</a>.In total 16 articles were published on rabies vaccination coverage in Africa. Although free roaming dogs are seen as a vaccination problem, the review showed that most dogs do have an owner. There is also a large proportion of puppies in the total dog population. Uptake of vaccination is 68% (almost the 70 % recommendation of the WHO) when vaccination is free of charge. When owners have to pay, uptake of rabies vaccination is only 18%. </span></span></span><br />
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Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-16048088022928374552015-04-28T06:54:00.000-07:002015-04-28T06:54:37.523-07:00The economics of Veterinaty Herd Health and Management ProgramsI have written about Veterinary Herd Health and Management (VHHM) more often, many times based upon results of the research of Marjolein Derks. Recently, the last two papers of her PhD thesis have been published so time for another episode about interesting topic. <br />
<br />
The first paper was written by Isioma Ifende as part of her MSc education in Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics (a specialisation of the<a href="http://www.msc-epidemiology.nl/" target="_blank"> Epidemiology MSc of Utrecht University</a>). The paper was published in <a href="http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/early/2014/06/15/vr.102183" target="_blank">Veterinary Record</a> and comprised a normative study on the economics of VHHM. For each of the farms on which we pubsliehd <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030214000514" target="_blank">earlier</a>, Isioma estimated the costs for Veterinary Herd Health Management, based on the questionnaire results, farm seize and norms for the time involved and price of the veterinarian. Moreover, the effects of VHHM were similarly calculated using normative modelling based on MPR data. Participants in VHHM had a better performance with regard to production, but not with regard to reproduction and culling. The benefits (net returns) and costs (net costs) of these differences were estimated normatively as well. There was, on average, a benefit to cost ratio of about five per cow per year for VHHM participants, and a mean difference in net returns of €30 per cow per year after adjusting for the cost of the programme. So, assuming everything else on the farms is the same. <br />
<br />
In the second paper, published in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167587714003468" target="_blank">Preventive Veterinary Medicine</a>, the overall economics based on available accountancy data of farms with and without VHHM could be calculated, thanks to a collaboration with <a href="http://www.alfa.nl/marge-monitor" target="_blank">Alfa Accountants and Advisors</a>. In total. 572 farmers of Alfa Accountants received a questionnaire on VHHM and these questionnaire data were combined with accountancy data. The data were analyzed using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). Models were run with as output the total revenues of the farm and as input the feed costs, land costs, cattle costs and non-operational costs. As explanatory variables number of FTE, total kg milk delivered (farm seize), price of concentrates, milk per hectare, cows per FTE and nutritional yield per hectare were inserted in the efficiency component. The frequency distributions of the efficiency scores for the VHHM dairies and the non-VHHM dairies were plotted in a kernel density plot. <br />
<br />
Although dairy farms with VHHM had higher total revenues per cow, there was no difference in efficiency between farms with VHHM and farms without VHHM. So, overall, VHHM is not related to farm efficiency. And now we have an interesting observation. We do see better performance (more milk per cow, lower somatic cell counts) of farms in VHHM. We calculated a net advantage of € 30 per cow per year because of that. However, in a total farm economic efficiency, this cannot be found back. <br />
<br />
There are a couple of explanations: one explanation is that farms that are in VHHM might have other additional costs as well (for instance we did correct for the additional feed necessary to produce more milk, but maybe the farmers in VHHM buy also more expensive feed). This brings noise to the real farm data analysis. We would need more data to correct for such factors and find the real effect of VHHM. Another reason might be that the difference due to VHHM is relatively small compared to the overall turnover of a farm. A difference of €30 per cow per year, makes up for € 3,000 for a 100 cow farm. That amount is approximately 1% of the total turnover of a 100 cow farm. Also in this case, we need more data to find significant differences. <br />
<br />
The question we have to ask ourselves is a marginal question: what would happen if a farm does start VHHM (or end VHHM) with the farm technical results and consequently the economic results. With our associative studies, we can give a clue about that but not a definitive answer. I still believe that VHHM can be very beneficial for a large number of our dairy farms. And the good thing is, there is not one study out that it costs money. Farmers can meet expectations of their customers (consumers) to have high quality milk, produced by health cows, without any additional costs and even some benefit. Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-58413706234868989632015-04-09T11:53:00.000-07:002015-04-09T11:53:00.728-07:00Animal welfare, society's opinion and economics
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It has been too long that I posted something on this blog. Ideas enough, but the time is lacking a bit (scarse resources). But this time a little different topic. It is about the pig sector. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the end
of december Tamara Bergstra defended her thesis on “welfare nd economics. The
origin of this thesis lies in a discussion some 5 years ago on piglet
mortality. It became general knowledge that piglet mortality in the Dutch pig
farms was a little more than 12%. Questions were asked I n parliament about
this and a program was initiated to improve the piglet mortality on Dutch pig
farms. With better breeding and management it was expected that piglet
mortality could be improved. At the same time, however, there were doubts
whether these meausurements would improve the image of the Dutch pig sector
with the general public.These doubts were fed by a fact that was (and probably
still is) quite peculiar. At the time of the discussions, piglet mortality on
organic sow farms was approximately 20%. But the public did nott worry about
the organic pig farms. There is some kind of understanding: There is soething
more than only the absolute figure of piglet mortality. We (prof. Elsbeth Stassen<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and myself) think it has to do with “trust”.
Trust that farmers do their best to take good care about their animals. Our
working hypothesis was that the general public does trust the organic farmers
taking good care of their animals while there is a distrust towards
conventional pig farmers:”they just want to produce as cheap as possible”. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The aim of
the project was: 1. To find out the view of citizens towards the pig sector and
to compare the view of citizens with the view of (organic) farmers and others
involved in pig farming. Moreover, we wanted to make this work deeper than
“just a questionnaire about viewpoints”. We wanted to work from a decent
framework and link the viewpoints of the respondents with their “basic values”.
This is typically the expertise of Elsbeth and I had the pleasure to discuss
along and learn a lot about ethics and values.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">2. To make
a cost-utility analysis. What are the most efficient measures to improve the
image of pig farming for the general public and how does this cost-utility link
when comparing it to improved animal welfare. We hypothesized that the
improvement of animal welfare is not linearly related to the improvement of
image. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This was a
totally novel approach. There is quite some effort to improve animal welfare, especially
in north-western European countries and there is a very limited number of
papers on the economics of welfare improvement (yet another field that is
unexplored) but nobody looked at the image of production. And especially in the
Netherlands, where the political power of farmers is very limited, there is
such a thing as the “license to produce”. The society kind of has to grant the
farmers the right to produce and farmers seem to have to earn this right more
and more. So animal production is not only about producing something that your
customers want to pay for (the economic licesense to produce) but also have to
work on their public relations: citizens might vote against you. Some do by not
buying your products, but more do by supporting animal right ngo’s or voting
for a party that wants to regulate animal welfare more strictly or wants to
decrease the amount of animal production. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3rk4R-KAIHp5LEPO-AEL_uU2iVcPPYM7C3dNfSJAkRhweR_dbFHNb-ZeGctPRUrQHwn2Gwqpe-b-fIWz__a7WwjtmFTdZQpTG1_9uGq5cokFiqoU5ZsPV7fEigc-2NbQtgLZUr9370gw/s1600/IMAG0108.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3rk4R-KAIHp5LEPO-AEL_uU2iVcPPYM7C3dNfSJAkRhweR_dbFHNb-ZeGctPRUrQHwn2Gwqpe-b-fIWz__a7WwjtmFTdZQpTG1_9uGq5cokFiqoU5ZsPV7fEigc-2NbQtgLZUr9370gw/s1600/IMAG0108.jpg" height="400" width="355" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Interestingly,
NRC, one of the leading Dutch newspapers, showed interest in the work of
Tamara. In a double interview (Eva Gocsik defended her PhD thesis on the
economics of animal welfare in the same week) NRC published a nice article
about the work of these two young researchers. It is a pity that the editors have a bad choice in pictures. </span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Scientific
publishing of the work of Tamara seems to be difficult. In my opinion, Tamara did
great research, but it is all interdisciplinary and some papers did not even
get the chance in journals. The <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10806-015-9539-x#" target="_blank">first paper</a> is recently published and others are the process of revision. We will make sure that papers will be published and
will share the results with you. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" /></span>Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-85929668301825513902014-09-11T05:51:00.001-07:002014-09-11T05:51:40.168-07:00Dry cow therapy
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Starting a
blog is one thing, maintaining it is yet another thing. The waiting time on
airports when travelling is then an excellent reason to write another item for
a blog. Many times the travel is done around interesting meetings in which some
inspiration for a blog entry is fond. Friday I was at the DACH tagung which was
held at the University of Zurich. The DACH tagung is a symposium for German
language veterinary epidemiologists and the theme of this year was
Tiergesundheit und Ökonomie. I had the honour to be the closing keynote speaker
and was asked to give a <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/economic-analysis-for" target="_blank">presentation on economic analysis for different levelsof decision making</a>. As always you can find the presentation at slideshare. Besides
a classification of different types of animal diseases, levels of decision
making and the decision makers involved I presented a few examples. One example
was on dry cow therapy. This is an intervention aimed at a typical production
disease and the, already 20 year old discussion on selective vs blanket dry cow
therapy. We did publish a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030207716119" target="_blank">paper in 2007</a> and that was used as example. In
<a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=259681&fileId=S0022029904000433" target="_blank">another paper</a>, published a little earlier we concluded the same. Note that the
methods used in both papers differed (Monte Carlo simulation modelling and
decision tree analysis), showing once more that there are more methods possible
to tackle the same problem. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The papers
showed that, on average, selective dry cow therapy is the cheapest option at
the herd level, but a farmer does accept more clinical mastitis when applying
selective dry cow therapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However,
currently there is regained interest in dry cow therapy because of the
discussion on the (preventive) use of antibiotics. Dutch dairy farmers have to
reduce the use of antibiotics and drying-off antibiotics make up quite a large
proportion of the antibiotic use. The question is then how to optimally use the
limited amount of antibiotics a farmer may use. That is a typical optimization
model and a student (Luuk Maas) dedicated his MSc thesis to this problem. He
linked his linear programming model to data <a href="http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duurzamemelkveehouderij.nl%2Frapportage%3Ffile%3Dtl_files%2Frapportage%2FSelectief%2520droogzetten.pdf&ei=LJoRVILDMcbuOcaPgKgF&usg=AFQjCNESaPH2qntx8QNQ5q6LGqcn4XI0FA&sig2=wkXfZVga9bpIeINwjce4Cw" target="_blank">from a large trial of the AnimalHealth Service in Deventer</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The basic
background of this work was that cows with an increased SCC before drying off
(primiparous cows > 150.000 cells/ml and multiparous cows > 250.000
cells/ml) will be dried off with antibiotics. For the other cows you want to
think about the most optimal level of use of antibiotics. It did show that it
was most efficient to not treat all cows with antibiotics, even if there was no
constraint (something we knew already), but Luuk also showed that when there is
a reduction in the use of antibiotics of more than 35 %, there will be costs
involved for the farmer. This limit is dependent on the farm. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This type
of knowledge can be used when further setting thresholds for responsible use of
antibiotics in dairy cattle. Yes: economics are important to support decisions.
Moreover, decisions regarding production diseases are not alone a matter of the
farmer. Since society and dairy processors are more and more interested <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in production diseases, they also should take
notice of the potential that animal health economics can offer them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-40860890913562370882014-06-12T06:58:00.000-07:002014-06-12T07:04:09.040-07:00<span style="font-family: Calibri;">to the Netherlands. This trip was a bit of work and a bit of a holiday. Our son Erwin just did his high school exams (and he passed<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">) and that was a good reason to combine an invitation to present at the Livestock Health and Production Group (LHPG) of the South African Veterinary Association (SAVA) with a bit of holiday together with Erwin. The meeting was very nicely organized, with good food, interesting people and a great place to keep it: Skukuza, which is the main camp of the Kruger Park. Having a meeting in Skukuza was something that had to be combined with a holiday. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBXgie7O7gsVdJI5wqQrPJ1SpviA8dlYZlslQUUjq2a98RaVvLy3PH9f9SU3sE_B1oQj9mMEME5OSmINM4KNCmvXMWDlUVbLbx7h1LTi0PzjdEFr3E_i6pEG1NVPuGPCmXtQbQv-8WnE/s1600/P5310180.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBXgie7O7gsVdJI5wqQrPJ1SpviA8dlYZlslQUUjq2a98RaVvLy3PH9f9SU3sE_B1oQj9mMEME5OSmINM4KNCmvXMWDlUVbLbx7h1LTi0PzjdEFr3E_i6pEG1NVPuGPCmXtQbQv-8WnE/s1600/P5310180.JPG" height="179" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN42S21izf5SFHSReNGIMhJKW_HRCniW4i9ohsaWwCAina6HB84gobjuHShIE8IO53Wo6ZENHIu11RlWzjkd-ru7l4gS0xwhEE2TyeKjc4HGf_ll-FFMo3juJJNkmI90V9nbuemvK0SI8/s1600/P5310128.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN42S21izf5SFHSReNGIMhJKW_HRCniW4i9ohsaWwCAina6HB84gobjuHShIE8IO53Wo6ZENHIu11RlWzjkd-ru7l4gS0xwhEE2TyeKjc4HGf_ll-FFMo3juJJNkmI90V9nbuemvK0SI8/s1600/P5310128.JPG" height="176" width="320" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is written on my way
back from Cape Town </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We did quite some gaming and saw the big five and a lot of other interesting animals. Thanks to Willem and Madaleen Schultheis, who were so friendly that we could use their car during the conference!! Some foto’s are attached.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXlWREXczEiOqMC0ECgkwEY392go4PjjIaBIDcBTdpj7RIKEwNsNw3qBheztzsWe6pBe3UKOEagV_M_7PCUwozXYVg1AC8hyphenhyphenNnV8NZaOoM03BVgJ3XvItn_-qPN3HElz2_8QGGPnEihRg/s1600/P5310151.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXlWREXczEiOqMC0ECgkwEY392go4PjjIaBIDcBTdpj7RIKEwNsNw3qBheztzsWe6pBe3UKOEagV_M_7PCUwozXYVg1AC8hyphenhyphenNnV8NZaOoM03BVgJ3XvItn_-qPN3HElz2_8QGGPnEihRg/s1600/P5310151.JPG" height="180" width="320" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPAZbKF9FlxOtzK4tMPNxnU7nk_mY9qyk25k_DDWmD6FasH3ZjRXYuSqoYcuWhqWYyrNcSJ7h18_mZkLxjJ0f7WUe0i2dm5qIHM3PRFhIS-gBEnZBQmHNYdkX5GTZok-iMJjEMq8ScBjE/s1600/P6020369.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPAZbKF9FlxOtzK4tMPNxnU7nk_mY9qyk25k_DDWmD6FasH3ZjRXYuSqoYcuWhqWYyrNcSJ7h18_mZkLxjJ0f7WUe0i2dm5qIHM3PRFhIS-gBEnZBQmHNYdkX5GTZok-iMJjEMq8ScBjE/s1600/P6020369.JPG" height="180" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But I do not write this blog to share holiday pictures. It is about management of animal health and I did give a number of presentations at the conference. The first was a </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/new-developments-in-the-dutch-dairy-sector" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">generic presentation on new developments in the Dutch dairy industry</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> that I thought are interesting for veterinarians in general: automation, abolishment of the quota system and the reduction in the use of antibiotics. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/reproduction-35793481" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">second was on reproduction</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, where I presented quite some of the PhD work of Chaidate Inchaisri (I have written before about that work earlier) and some new material of Niels Rutten, who is currently doing a PhD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The third presentation was to replace somebody who unfortunately could not attend the meeting and the topic he was to present about was economics of mastitis, that was something I could do quite quickly, since I have a lot of material about mastitis readily available. In fact it was a</span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/economics-to-support-mastitis-decisions" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> presentation I gave before in Spain<o:p></o:p></span></a><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/the-economics-of-an-infectious-disease-outbreak-using-the-european-q-fever-epidemic-as-an-example" target="_blank">The fourthpresentation was about Q fever</a>. The organization asked me to present something
on the Dutch goad and/or sheep sector. Luckily I was, together with Mirjam
Nielen, one of the advisors of Maaike Gonggrijp, who did her MSc thesis on a
quantified value chain analysis on the Q fever outbreak in the Netherlands in
2007-2009. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The final presentation was scheduled at 8.00 AM, after the night of
the gala dinner and there was some good South African wine on that gala dinner.
To my great surprise the room was well filled. My compliments for the
discipline of the audience!! <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/associations-between-farmer-participation-in-veterinary-herd-health-programs-and-farm-performance" target="_blank">The presentation was an overview of the work ofMarjolein Derks</a>, who will soon defend her thesis on Veterinary Herd Health and
Management Programs (VHHM) in the Netherlands. In my opinion, these programs
are of growing importance to the dairy industry. There is more and more
attention of society for healthy animals and that in combination with a
reduction in the use of antibiotics calls for more efforts in disease prevention.
Recently Marjolein got two papers published in the Journal of Dairy Science.
The first was a description of the participation of farmers in Veterinary Herd
Health and Management Programs, where she related this participation with
farmer characteristics, to see whether it is a specific part of the farmers
that are participating in VHHM.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most
carried out activities in VHHM were (still) fertility checks and advice about
fertility. The least carried out was advice on claw health and housing.
Especially those farmers that use information and trust information were found
to participate more often in VHHM. In the second paper, the information on
participation in VHHM was related to the data of CRV (the work was financed by
CRV, for which I gratefully want to acknowledge them!!). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Farmers who
participated in VHHM produced 336 kg of milk/cow per year more and their
average milk somatic cell count (SCC) was 8,340 cells/mL lower than farmers who
did not participate in VHHM. Participating herds, however, had an older age at
first calving (+12 d), a lower 56-d nonreturn rate percentage (−3.34%), and a
higher number of inseminations per cow (+0.09 inseminations). They also had more
cows culled per year (+1.05%), and a lower age at culling (−70 d). A
distinction was made in the level of participation. Participants in the
most-extended form of VHHM (level 3) had a lower SCC (−19,800 cells/mL), fewer
cows with high SCC (−1.70%), fewer cows with new high SCC (−0.47%), a shorter
calving interval (−6.01 d), and fewer inseminations per heifer (−0.07
inseminations) than participants in the least extended form of VHHM (level 1).
Level 3 participants, however, also had more cows culled per year (+1.74%) and
a lower age at culling (−103 d). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So from these data, it seems that VHHM is
associated with, very important, a better milk production level and udder
health . Reproductive performance is not necessarily better and there is some
more culling. The questions is now how these variables can be weighed
(economically) against eachother. We have carried out some economic analyses.
These are shortly summarized in the presentation and papers on these analyses
are out there somewhere, waiting to be published (the MSc work of Isioma Ifende
is recently accepted for publication) and hopefully accepted. So you will hear
more about this topic. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-8739835504808962832014-02-13T00:12:00.001-08:002014-02-13T00:12:51.979-08:00Economics of veterinary herd health and management programs<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In 2012, the World Buiatrics Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal. As you might know from one of my previous posts, I was there as keynote speaker on the economics of production diseases. During these type of conferences, main sponsors are often allowed to organize a mini-session on a topic they want. The contents are the responsibility of the sponsor and not of the scientific committee of the conferen. So the three main sponsors of this conference (Pfizer; now Zoetis, Hipra and MSD) had all three a mini conference. During the Pfizer/Zoetis minisymposium, Miel Hostens and Bonny van Ranst (Ghent University) gave a presentation on <a href="http://prezi.com/tf-1dkpfxlqf/bonny-herd-health/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy" target="_blank">The future of cattle veterinary medicine: a challenge or an opportunity</a>. Their message was clear: the vet is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the </b>most suitable person to give advice to farmers. And many of us agree with that statement. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So there lies an enormous opportunity for veterinarians and these opportunities go through Veterinary Herd Health and Management (VHHM) programs. Hostens and van Ranst presented an interesting tool they developed that can be used in veterinary herd health and management programs. The tool is web-based and can be used this type of work, to analyse data and have these analyses available through a website: </span></span><a href="http://www.dairydatawarehouse.com/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">www.dairydatawarehouse.com</span></span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In their lyrical presentation about the benefits of VHHM, there was a little dissonant. Reference was made to a discussion on <a href="http://www.veeteeltforum.nl/" target="_blank">Veeteeltforum</a> (an internet forum connected to the Trade journal <a href="http://veeteelt.nl/" target="_blank">Veeteelt</a> in which I publish quite a lot) about the economic value VHHM. The topic was based on an interview that I gave, together with Sake Kooistra of Alfa Accountants on <a href="http://www.alfa.nl/Branches-sectoren/melkveehouderij/Documents/Zelf-aan-het-roer-blijven-(Veeteelt-mei-2).pdf" target="_blank">advisory services to dairy farmers</a>. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Conclusions of an MSc thesis study, using accounting data of Alfa Accountants, was that the economic results of farms with VHHM are the same than on farms without VHHM. Farms with VHHM do have better milk production and better udder health. But they also have higher veterinary costs. And although in theory the advantages should more than outweigh the additional costs of the VHHM, in these data it did not show. The economic results of the farms in a VHHM program are equal to the farms without a VHHM program. Interestingly, the farmers’ trade journals all had very negative interpretations of this news. Becasue of these negative headings, Miel Hostens and Bonny van Ranst reacted also negatively on this research, as if we should not publish it. And yes, if you are advocating VHHM programs it is disappointing that VHHM does currently not lead to better economic results (at least not in the Netherlands). At the moment we are analyzing these data more thoroughly, so you will hear more about them in the near future. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my opinion, however, we should look at ourselves. How good are veterinarians in VHHM. They are good in the routine things, pregnancy checks, treatment protocols etc. but how good are they really in advising? Their knowledge is superb, no doubt about it. Moreover, in my opinion they often see the areas of the farmer’s health management that need to be improved but are they able to get that message to their farmers? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">An interesting study of one of my PhD students, Marjolein Derks, revealed that the objectives of the farmer often deviate from the objectives that the vet thinks the farmer has (oops), that advisory talks are not really open (no or hardly space for questions) and that the consulting technique is quite bad. The scientific paper on this is recently published in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090023313003419" target="_blank">The Veterinary Journal</a>. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">let’s combine the these two issues. </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is a huge potential of VHHM. Obviously this potential is not utilized in practice. Let’s work on that utilization. Vets: learn how to become a successful consultant and farmers: you pay the vet, so make sure you tell the vet what you want him/her to do. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And about the economic results: my interpretation is as follows: with VHHM you have a smoother running farm, potentially higher milk production level and lower disease levels. That is good for the farmer (more fun if your farm runs smoothly) and good for the cows (better welfare because of less diseases). And all that without costing money!! That is a quite unique selling point I would say. </span></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-65732687552368278172014-01-31T07:00:00.000-08:002014-01-31T07:00:45.104-08:00Balancing cure rate, economics, welfare and antibiotic resistance<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the moment I am on my way back from the NMC (National Mastitis Council) annual meeting, that was held in Fort Worth, TX. At this meeting I was invited to give a talk on this topic, in the session: “Analytical approaches to managing mastitis”, a session preceding the session entitled “Treatment and non-treatment approaches in tackling mastitis”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The title of my presentation was: "Treating mastitis: Balancing cure, welfare, money and resistance". As always I have made my presentation available through <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/2014-0127-nmc-balancing-treatments" target="_blank">slideshare</a>. In the presentation I show some results that I found in literature, mainly on economic balancing (optimization), but given the session I had to talk in, my presentation also explained how you can make economic calculations on different treatment options and how you can optimize treatments (for instance by the use of linear programming). </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But the whole thing of balancing might be novel of thinking and therefore a good topic for an entry on this blog. It has been too long since my previous entry anyhow. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Naturally, veterinarians and many other animal health professionals are aiming at the highest cure rate. We strive for healthy animals. The situation with regard to mastitis is no exception on this rule: Let’s treat an animal with the best possible treatment. That is good for the health and welfare of a cow. In fact there is not much balancing between cure rate and welfare, at least not in my opinion. I would argue that a better cure rates is approximately equal to better welfare. But what about economics and antibiotic resistance? Let me give an example of an e-mail debate I had last year about selective dry cow therapy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It started with a question of a representative of a pharmaceutical company to a number of mastitis experts (I was among that group). The question was about proper criteria to select cows for dry cow therapy. There was a quick answer from a renowned mastitis specialist that it was silly to do this, because it is proven that the risk of clinical mastitis is higher when dry cow therapy is skipped. And this specialist is right. For whatever group of cows, in whatever situation (also the situation in many Nordic countries where hygiene for dry cows is very good), when dry cow therapy is omitted there is a (sometimes slightly) higher risk of mastitis in the next lactation. So to minimize the risk of clinical (and subclinical) mastitis in the first 100 days after calving, you should use blanket dry cow therapy. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, when you toss economics in the equation, things might change a bit. The costs of treating each cow with antibiotics at drying off to prevent a small proportion of cows to get clinical mastitis, is not cost efficient. So, depending on the risk for a farm system or a certain group of cows within a farm system, selective dry cow therapy might be economically profitable. And indeed, there needs to be a balance between the welfare (cure rate) and the economics. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If we take things a step further and toss the use of antibiotics into account, things differ again. In the Netherlands, we want to reduce the use of antibiotics and omit the preventive use antibiotics in animals. Than we might set for ourselves a limit in the amount of antibiotics that are used (expressed in “daily doses”). So when we limit ourselves in the use of antibiotics, it might go at the costs of the welfare of cows (more mastitis cases during lactation) and the economic results of the farm (higher costs for mastitis associated with the dry period). Linear programming might help us finding the economic optimum given a threshold of antibiotics to be used. We can also set a welfare threshold. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Using these type of methods, we can provide decision makers with the consequences of their decisions, we can provide tools. But it is in the end up to decision makers, farmers, regulatory bodies and governments how they balance animal welfare, economics and use of antibiotics .</span></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-76648736655510181402013-10-22T12:34:00.000-07:002013-10-22T12:34:33.083-07:00Paper on the effects of the Dutch mastitis control programmeOne of my ideas for this blog is to make an entry including the main results of scientific papers that we have published. Well, I am a little behind schedule. But here is a paper that was published last February. So for some of you, this post does not add much value I am afraid. On the other hand, not everybody is following the scientific literature so who knows it is interesting. <br />
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Last year, Theo Lam, projectleader of the Dutch 5-year mastitis control project and director of UGCN (the organization that was instituted just to carry out much of the work within that project) had the idea to write a paper on the changes in udder health in the Netherlands during the 5-year mastitis control project. This paper was published in the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030212009095" target="_blank">Journal of Dairy Science</a> last February. Before the programme started, a "zero-measurement" was done, to see what the udder health status was in the Netherlands, in terms of incidence of clinical mastitis, somatic cell count as well as knowledge and attitude (mindset) of the farmers. Five years later these measurements were repeated. The difference between both measurements can be attributed to the mastitis control programme. Basic conclusions were that the indicence of clinical mastitis decreased significantly with 5.4 %. There was no significant difference in somatic cell counts. Also the mindset of farmers towards udder health did change during the programme time. The data were used for a normative economic study, which showed that, on the national level, the total failure costs (milk production losses, culling, treatment and veterinary costs) due to mastitis decreased with € 8 million per year. <br />
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However, this sounds OK, but there is one major problem: there is no control group. We do not know how the status of Dutch dairy farmers would be when the 5-year control programme would not have been there. So we have to be a bit careful when interpreting these figures. The full abstract of this paper is given below. <br />
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Because of increasing bulk milk somatic cell counts and continuous clinical mastitis problems in a substantial number of herds, a national mastitis control program was started in 2005 to improve udder health in the Netherlands. The program started with founding the Dutch Udder Health Centre (UGCN), which had the task to coordinate the program. The program consisted of 2 parts: a research part and a knowledge-transfer part, which were integrated as much as possible. The knowledge-transfer part comprised 2 communication strategies: a central and a peripheral approach. The central approach was based on educating farmers using comprehensive science-based and rational argumentation about mastitis prevention and included on-farm study group meetings. Comprehensive education materials were developed for farmers that were internally motivated to improve udder health. In the peripheral approach it was tried to motivate farmers to implement certain management measures using nontechnical arguments. Mass media campaigns were used that focused on one single aspect of mastitis prevention. These communication strategies, as well as an integrated approach between various stakeholders and different scientific disciplines were used to reach as many farmers as possible. It should be noted that, because this intervention took place at a national level, no control group was available, as it would be impossible to isolate farmers from all forms of communication for 5 years. Based on several studies executed during and after the program, however, the results suggest that udder health seemed to have improved on a national level during the course of the program from 2005 to 2010. Within a cohort of dairy herds monitored during the program, the prevalence of subclinical mastitis did not change significantly (23.0 in 2004 vs. 22.2 in 2009). The incidence rate of clinical mastitis, however, decreased significantly, from 33.5 to 28.1 quarter cases per 100 cow years at risk. The most important elements of the farmers' mindset toward mastitis control also changed favorably. The simulated costs of mastitis per farm were reduced compared with a situation in which the mastitis would not have changed, with € 400 per year. When this amount is extrapolated to all Dutch farms, the sector as a whole reduced the total costs of mastitis by € 8 million per year. It is difficult to assign the improved udder health completely to the efforts of the program due to the lack of a control group. Nevertheless, investing € 8 million by the Dutch dairy industry in a 5-yr national mastitis control program likely improved udder health and seemed to pay for itself financially. Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-15146481233264605672013-09-19T05:37:00.000-07:002013-09-19T05:37:00.598-07:00Teaching Economics of animal health: what are the needsYou probably know that all teachers think their course and their topic is the most important topic that is taught in an education. Well, it is no different for us people that are teaching Economics of animal health. <br />
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On the other hand, we do have an EU-funded network that is aimed at the promotion of the best use of economics by animal health professionals. Within the network, we are working to map existing educational materials and identifying gaps between needs for educational materials and availability of materials. Based on this gap we will develop new materials and make these available for all that want to use it (for more info, see the website of NEAT: <a href="http://www.neat-network.eu/">www.neat-network.eu</a>). The network was initiated and is lead by prof. <a href="http://www.rvc.ac.uk/staff/jrushton.cfm" target="_blank">Jonathan Rushton</a>, one of the current leaders of the field of Economics of Animal Health. <br />
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Last week, the first Annual Meeting of NEAT was held and organized by RVC in London. A little less than 100 people form all over the world attended. Participants were members of the network but also people that were interested in the topic of teaching Economics of animal health. During the meeting, progress was presented but also a number of topics were discussed. I head to lead a discussion on how to close the gap between the Needs of the end user and the materials that are offered by educational institutions. But to answer that, we first have to find out if there is a gap between supply of teaching in Economics of animal health and the demand for teaching. Well, not surprisingly, we concluded that there was a gap. Now for the next step we need to find out what the demands are. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>What is the need for teaching in the field of Economics of animal health???</strong> </div>
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To answer that we have to go out and talk to end-users. And yes, we are going to do that. But we also have our own ideas. <br />
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<h3>
Veterinarians</h3>
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A first target group of animal health professionals are the veterinarians. A core level of knowledge that all veterinarians should have is the notion that economics are associated with the keeping of animals and with any animal health decision resources are associated (and thus economics). At the farm level this can be costs of intervention (monetary to be paid by the farmer) vs benefits of less disease (expressed in monetary terms). At the companion animal level this can be the costs of the intervention (monetary, to be paid by the owner) vs the utility of a healthy animal (not or very difficult to express in monetary terms). Besides that knowledge on economics of animal health, veterinarians might also want to know about the Business eocnomics of their own practise (how to determine a price, cost price, interpretation of annual economic reports, etc.).<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">More specifically on animal health the demands for the farm animal veterinary are:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Being able to reason on the consequences of diseases (including herd dynamics). Go beyond treatment of the individual animal.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Being able to do economic reasoning, so that veterinarians can (qualitatively) adjust standard calculations (from literature for instance) or to be able to expertly fill in tools that are available<o:p></o:p></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the herd level: costs of diseases (problem definition; basics of herd health planning)</span></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Justify their own fee<o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Have knowledge on farmers' behaviour and goals</span></li>
</ul>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For companion animial veterinarians a specific demand is:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Value of insurance (companion animals). Economics behind insurances</span></span></li>
</ul>
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p>Government decision makers</o:p></span></h3>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p>Another group of animal health professionals that might need knowledge on Economics of animal health are people working in governments. Demands for this group of professions are:</o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Effect of policies (import/export) on the primary producers (regulatory impact assessment)<o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Public vs private goods. <o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Assessments on market and sector level (not micro level)<o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Farmers behavior (goals)<o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Economic background of methods for eradication (how to cope with list A diseases) <o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Economics of surveillance<o:p></o:p></span></span></li>
<li>.....<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">for this group of professionals as well as for the veterinarians we can conclude that they do not need to receive teaching that they can do their own calculations. It is merely teaching so that these animal health professionals are able to understand calculations and be a informed partner of professionsals in Economics of animal health. </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This is just the beginning</span></h3>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The demands given above are just a first idea that was based on discussions during the NEAT annual meeting. If you are reading this blog and think that we forgot something, please let me know (you can comment this blog). If you think that a demand I wrote down is not necessary, let me know also. And finally, if you want to join the NEAT network, feel free to do so. Send an e-mail to : <a href="mailto:info@neat-network.eu">info@neat-network.eu</a></span>Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-84714834666677632802013-07-08T06:45:00.000-07:002013-07-08T06:45:28.891-07:00Why is animal health economics a difficult topic in the veterinary curriculumSome <span style="font-family: inherit;">time</span> ago I posted a blog why I think that it is important that <a href="http://animal-health-management.blogspot.nl/2013/01/why-large-animal-veterinarians-need-to.html" target="_blank">veterinarians know something about economics</a>. Well nothing news here on that. <br />
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Fortunately, I am not the only one who thinks so. Last year a European network project started, entitled "Networking to Enhance the use of Economics in Animal education, policy making, and research in Europe and beyond" (<a href="http://www.neat-network.eu/" target="_blank">NEAT</a>). The objective of this project is to <span style="font-family: inherit;">strengthen and enhance the use of economics in animal health in higher education and professional environments throughout Europe.</span> Project leader of this project is Jonathan Rushton from the Royal Veterinary College and one of the key players in the field of animal health economics. There is a blog on the NEAT website and the first contribution on this blog (after the welcome message of the project leader) was my blog on the importance of economics for the veterinarian. As a response, Professor <a href="http://www.nvh.no/no/Ansatte/MatInf/Eystein-Skjerve/" target="_blank">Eystein Skjerve</a> from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, made a contribution on the reason why animal health economics is such a difficult topic in the veterinary curriculum. His observations are quite interesting and I have copied them underneath. Have fun!!<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The elementary reason for this is of course that economics and production is not among the motivations for applying for vet school. But – there are more fundamental reasons linked to the lack of staff competence in vet schools. Veterinary epidemiologists or herd health staff not properly trained in economics may not be the best starting point, but I assume the major limitations is that staff may not know enough about the economic aspects of the animal production systems. To link epidemiology and economics means that you have to understand the biological rationale of the production systems. My strong belief is that teaching has to start from a clear biological scenario and not abstract economics. A vet student or graduate veterinarian will be able to follow into economy if the biological case is well described.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The challenge is thus to train teachers in economy without losing the intimate connection to animal health and the bio-production systems. Where the “true” economists fit here I forward as a question – should perhaps this be a two-step procedure – that the “true” economists train veterinarians/ epidemiologists at a sufficient level to teach vet students??</blockquote>
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Do we recognize our own Veterinary Schools? I have heard stories from older veterinarians in the Netherlands that got economics from an economist. They learned about production functions, consumer demand, cost prices etc. but for me it sounded like the experience that I had with statistics (prof Skjerve is working in the field of epidemiology and statistics). You learn a lot about statistics and at the moment you start doing research you think: "sh*t I thought I paid more attention during those statistics classes!!" I hope I am doing better now. How can we solve this phenomenom? One idea that I thought when we were introducting our elearning courses on animal health economics, is that elearning can be a solution. Just a thought. Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-10799654432763168092013-06-28T08:13:00.000-07:002013-06-28T08:13:04.631-07:002nd North American Precision Dairy Farming ConferenceI am about to leave Rochester, Minnesota. A nice city just south of the Twin Cities. On my way here I learned that Rochester is well known because of the Mayo Clinic. In the shuttle from the airport to my hotel, somebody was really surprised that I never had heard of the clinic. This morning I walked through downtown Rochester and it seemd that half of it consisted of the clinic. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XzOXE19do0keY5hDF97UW6SqYADb1wzeTeU-dkSq7SZS5jECEJCurZRcVCMr3bm2EUQPVzzukCya4AwvHP2OmLjj5vFdckvN2_b_LvcUioNf9HffLm_c97U8iXPBs5AdIW07lETLiRE/s1500/Rochester_Minnesota_downtown_aerial_view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XzOXE19do0keY5hDF97UW6SqYADb1wzeTeU-dkSq7SZS5jECEJCurZRcVCMr3bm2EUQPVzzukCya4AwvHP2OmLjj5vFdckvN2_b_LvcUioNf9HffLm_c97U8iXPBs5AdIW07lETLiRE/s1500/Rochester_Minnesota_downtown_aerial_view.jpg" height="256" width="320" xya="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Downtown Rochester with in the Middle the Mayo Civic<br />center where the meeting was held</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Anyhow, I was not in Rochester to visit the clinic but to visit the <a href="http://precisiondairy.umn.edu/" target="_blank">2nd North American Precision Dairy Farming Conference</a>, organized by the University of Minnesota under leadership of <a href="http://www.ansci.umn.edu/People/Faculty/Endres/index.htm" target="_blank">Marcia Endres</a>. The first conference was held three years ago in Toronto, Canada. During that first conference, there wasn't that much good science available yet. This conference showed quite a change: there were plenty of interesting talks. And always surprising to me, there were a large amount of dairy farmers during the conference. I am afraid our Dutch dairy farmers do not go to two-day conferences with lots of scientific knowledge. For us it is interesting, because there were quite a number of farmers panels, explaing what their experience is with certain types of precision dairy farming applications. Good to hear their experiences, but at the same time we have to remember that these were not the average farmers. The organizers had invited an interesting list of renowned keynote speakers: Alex Bach (on feeding management), Jeffrey Bewley (introducting precision dairy farming to us), Albert de Vries (on economics of precision dairy farming), Marcia Endres (on automated calf feeders), Ilan Halachmi (on sensors for disease detection), Margit Bak Jensen (on milk feeding to calves), Ray Nebel (on automated estrus detection), Doug Reinemann (on automated mastitis detection), Jack Rodenburg (on cow traffic in automatic milking), Doyle Waybright (Mason-Dixie farms on farming with automatic milking) and myself (on success factors of precison dairy applications). <br />
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Together with Albert de Vries I had the honour to wrap up the conference. It is a bit of a ungrateful honour, because many people are leaving the conference, much of what you want to say has already been told and people just want to go home. On the other hand it is also a nice challenge to make such a talk interesting. <br />
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The presentation that I gave can be found<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/precision-dairy-farming-how-to-make-it-work-on-the-farm" target="_blank"> here</a>. In short I presented that in my opinion a successful precision dairy farming application (I also call it "sensor system") has to do more than measuring a physiological status in a cow. That data has to be transformed in useful information. Without that information, the sensor is useless. The goal of precision dairy farming applications should be decision support. Sensor information therefore, for some applications, should be combined with other data sources and be associated with decision support tools. There are hardly any applications described in scientific literature (see the <a href="http://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(13)00140-9/abstract" target="_blank">review of Niels Rutten</a>) that contain all of these aspects. <br />
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Successfull applications should furthermore be economical viable (benefits exceed the costs), although this is not always necessary, for instance in the case of adoption of automatic milking, where quality of life, flexibility of labor etc. are important reasons to invest in automatic milking. <br />
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Finally I think that the ultimate goal of precision dairy farming should be to explore the full potential of each individual dairy cow, instead of managing cows in groups. In the old days with small herds, that was possible, with the larger herds, that became difficult, but now with assitance of precision dairy farming technology it is possible again. Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-71961774772112429692013-05-23T13:09:00.003-07:002013-05-23T13:09:33.298-07:00Co-operation between farm advisorsDutch farmers are lucky. Distances are short and every farmer has the availability of many advisors from various sources at a relatively short distance. There is, however, not much co-operation between advisors. I was invited to give a presentation on a "flash-meeting" of the Dutch society for Agricultural Advisors (<a href="http://www.vabnet.nl/agrarische-bedrijfsadviseurs/" target="_blank">VAB</a>) on the topic of co-operation between farm advisors. The idea was to give a short presentation and use this as starting point for discussion. Not too many participants were allowed in order to make discussion possible. My presentation was entitled: "Increasing the profitability of herd production programs". The slides are available on <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/cooperation-between-farm-advisors" target="_blank">slideshare</a>. <div>
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<div>
The idea of my presentation was that there are three main groups of advisors on Dutch (dairy) farms: the veterinarian (in herd health programs and occasionally when there are health problems), the feed advisor and the economic advisor. Their knowledge overlaps, vets do know their thing about feed ratios and feed in relation to milk production, while economic advisors have a quite generic knowledge of the dairy farm. Besides knowledge on feed, feed advisors also have a generic knowledge about farming. Sometimes the advisors feel competition from the others, which might prevent co-operation. Moreover, most of the Dutch feed advisors are paid by the feed companies. Their advises are "free" (you pay them with the feed of course), while the other advisors have to be paid per hour. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have presented a couple of cases where each of the advisors could, from their point of view, give different advises for the same topic, and these advises might even contradict. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We quickly agreed that co-operation between advisors is needed in order to improve the profitability of advises. We also agreed that it is the farmer who needs to direct these different advises. However, we are afraid that our dairy farmers are not (yet) good in that task. We do have some data (not published yet, if it is published I will let you know) that shows that in the relation between the dairy farmer and their veterinary advisor all kinds of things go wrong. The vet does overestimate the capabilities of the dairy farmer to ask questions and to take the lead. Well, if we know that that might happen, we should account for it. There might even be a role for one of the team of advisors to coach a farmer in this work. In our opinion, the advising team should meet, under direction of the farmer, to set goals for the coming one or two years. Those goals can be on production level, herd seize, health status, etc. Besides these goals a plan should be made how to reach the goals. The advising team should agree upon these goals and work in their coming individual visits on those goals. The farmer (maybe in co-operation with one advisor who coaches him/her on it) has to keep the team in good place and follow the progress of the plan. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We were lucky that one of the participants had experience in coaching farmers to take the lead in setting up an advisor team. He was very enthusiastic and has had great successes using this approach. Although not all efforts succeeded, but most did. One example really stood out. This was in the 25 % worst performing farms (economically) and is now in the 25 % best performing farms. Wow, advise can be profitable. </div>
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<div>
The challenge is to show this and to make the value of farm advise visual. That is a matter of marketing and we might learn a lot from ordinary business consultants in this. </div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-15488959553240244802013-05-10T13:40:00.003-07:002013-05-10T13:40:59.018-07:00Rabies control<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have a PhD student named Ewaldus Wera. He is working at <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kupang State Agriculture Polytechnic Univesity in Kupang, West Timor,</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Indonesia and </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">has a grant from the Indonesian government</span> to get his PhD at Wageningen University. After an initial time in Wageningen to do some courses and to set up his research plans, he went back for data collection. I had the pleasure to visit him in Indonesia. During my visit I had the honour to give a presentation on animal health economics to the veterinary students of Kupang State Agriculture Polytechnic and to visit the Animal Science facilities over there. It was great to find out that there were people there that were following my activities on the social media. Wow. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most important part of my visit, however, was to make a site visit to the Island of Flores, where Ewaldus is doing is field work, in co-operation with the local animal health authoroties there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The topic of his research: economics of rabies control. Indeed, a little different topic than most topics I discussin this blog, Nevertheless it is quite interesting. When I had to fly over, I had to make a stopover on Bali and on the airport there was a banner warning for rabies on the island. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixT41FfA5qo2434s29ZrjWAlPLgWkw-IPahiYB1gq8QoKQz3BRz8vc6jBhnHN36ChoSS6LAeos9Wv6GGb6bekGLPmIFOb-IMQv5VmLcTAqymPd-7JnwTrkxDSiJ_u5fYtRzCsKuGrPZuc/s1600/IMG-20130221-00404.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixT41FfA5qo2434s29ZrjWAlPLgWkw-IPahiYB1gq8QoKQz3BRz8vc6jBhnHN36ChoSS6LAeos9Wv6GGb6bekGLPmIFOb-IMQv5VmLcTAqymPd-7JnwTrkxDSiJ_u5fYtRzCsKuGrPZuc/s1600/IMG-20130221-00404.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Warning banner as a welcome on the airport of Bali (after 15 hours of flying I was not able to keep my phone steady, so it is a bit fuzzy). </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Basically, rabies is a zoonotic disease that, in humans is always fata once clinical signs appear. The main transmission routes is through dog bites. There is a lot of information to be found on the internet, for instance </span><a href="http://www.rabiescontrol.net/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.oie.int/en/animal-health-in-the-world/rabies-portal/events/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In Flores island alone, rabies is the cause of 19 human deaths per year. After the introduction of rabies, the local government has been taking quite a lot of efforts to eradicate rabies again from the island, without succes until now. Ewaldus has carried out an economic study to evaluate the costs that were associated with the control measures carried out since the year 2000 on Flores island. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Currently, rabies control </span><span lang="IN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: IN;">measures</span><span lang="IN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%;">o</span><span lang="IN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: IN;">n</span><span lang="IN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Flores </span><span lang="IN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: IN;">I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">sland include mass vaccination and culling of dogs, </span><span lang="IN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: IN;">laboratory diagnostic</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%;">s</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="IN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: IN;">of suspected rabid</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> dogs, putting imported dogs in quarantine, and pre- and post-exposure treatment (PET) of humans. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Using a</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> deterministic economic calculation model, Ewaldus estimated that the control measures were estimated to </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">be </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">US$1.08 million </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">(range: US$0.57–1.42 million) </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">per year</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">. He presented his work at the last ISVEE meeting and the <a href="http://www.sciquest.org.nz/elibrary/edition/6936" target="_blank">proceedings </a>are available. Interestingly, Ewaldus not only looked at the costs of vaccination, but also at the costs of culling, especially at the value of the culled dogs. In Flores Island, dogs are a source of protein for the population (in other words, dogs are eaten) and dogs play an important role in chasing away monkeys, so that they do not damage the harvest. The consequence of taking those costs into account are that the costs of culling (semi) roaming dogs were the highest portion (about 39 % of the total costs). Post exposure treatment was the second highest portion of the costs (35 %). </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQQFUzkmTeB20jtbpp8cjuHGQ2A-LavMNmEhzvDDPe4kiKkZqAD611EnmHMhd-6dje2h2dCzJwNiw3hUygP10ZiN7056azW5_FJiSPFRWokhevBZ8Rv011cVYdtSyy0u0GtzZavxX11U/s1600/IMG-20130223-00456.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqQQFUzkmTeB20jtbpp8cjuHGQ2A-LavMNmEhzvDDPe4kiKkZqAD611EnmHMhd-6dje2h2dCzJwNiw3hUygP10ZiN7056azW5_FJiSPFRWokhevBZ8Rv011cVYdtSyy0u0GtzZavxX11U/s1600/IMG-20130223-00456.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ewaldus (orange shirt) and his data collection team in one of the villages in the field research</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">In Flores Island, there is a tendency towards less preventive measures and more PET. However, in the long run that may be more expensive then prevention. Next steps in the research are going to be aimed at the willingness of dog owners to co-operate with preventive measures and the costs-benefit of preventive measures. So you will be hearing more about his research in the future. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFN6CsFoy4RpY1uhTTW_fXtIngLZXzj1BFBTF0Z8hDve6b3xrq_fkEGA6yQePZddRvreQVR65So5fEdi593ZNbiP2fq3upr45GNgH3tThQF1PKfSc7lzowGI5BZ5xj0rl-57CkjuZUYwk/s1600/IMG-20130223-00422.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFN6CsFoy4RpY1uhTTW_fXtIngLZXzj1BFBTF0Z8hDve6b3xrq_fkEGA6yQePZddRvreQVR65So5fEdi593ZNbiP2fq3upr45GNgH3tThQF1PKfSc7lzowGI5BZ5xj0rl-57CkjuZUYwk/s1600/IMG-20130223-00422.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the benefits of travel: Ewaldus took me to Kelimutu lakes, a beautiful spot, where volcanic lakes have totally different colours that even change over time. </span></td></tr>
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Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-36877307968124751712013-05-08T00:33:00.001-07:002013-05-08T00:41:27.824-07:00Mastitis detection on farms with an AMS<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What a little tweet can do. A couple of weeks ago we had the annual meeting of the Dutch Mastitis Research workers. Dutch is here: Dutch language, because we meet with the mastitis research workers from the Netherlands as well as from Flanders (Belgium). It had my laptop with me and an internet connection, so from each talk I made a tweet. Personally I presented research entitled: </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/2013-0416-dmrw-farmers-alerts" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Consequences of farmers' interpretation of mastitis alerts".</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This work was done as research internship of a veterinary student (Klaske Buma, she is now working as practitioner) and mostly supervised by my colleague Ruurd Jorritsma from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The tweet of this presentation was: <strong>Results of internship of Klaske Buma: #AMS farmers check only 3.5% of mastitis alerts. As a result 74% of mastitis cases is missed </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result almost all Dutch farmers journals picked this up and wrote something about this item. Amazing how things go in the land of the journals. But given the interest in this little tweet, it is good to give a little more background on this item. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-language: NL;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When milking cows with an automatic milking system (AMS), for mastitis detection, farmers have to rely on sensor alerts. It is known that, although the sensitivity and specificity of current mastitis are quite reasonable, the systems still give a relative large number of false positive alerts. In order to find detect all mastitis cases, farmers have to visually check all alerts. We do know that far from all farmers are doing that. The goal of this research was therefore to study farmers behavior related to mastitis alerts and the consequences thereof. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The study was done on 7 farms, located around one village in the north of the Netherlands. The farmers needed to be motivated to enter the study. All farms were milking with a Lely Astronaut (Lely, Rotterdam, the Netherlands) AMS. Each farm was visited five times. During each visit, the farmers were questioned about the alerts on the alert list of that day. After this questioning, the milk of all four quarters of every cow on the alert list was visually checked for clinical mastitis and was checked for subclinical mastitis using the CMT test. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the first visit and before checking individual quarters, a questionnaire was held on the criteria farmers used for selecting cows on the alert list to be visually checked. Important criteria for farmers were, an alarming change in milk production, flakes and/or clots on the milk filter in combination with high electrical conductivity or a failed milking. Reasons for not checking alerts were: no flakes or clots on the milk filter, no change in milk production, cows that were repeatedly on the alert list or a lack of time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In total 421 alerts were studied (see Table). Of all mastitis alerts, 60 % were not associated with mastitis. For the repeated alerts (cows that had been on the alert list earlier), 46 % of the alerts were not associated with mastitis. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="border-collapse: collapse; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 541px;"><tbody>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: white; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Studied alets and mastitis </span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: white; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<tr style="height: 15.35pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;"><td nowrap="" style="background: #e6b8b7; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 99.1pt;" valign="bottom" width="132"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></td><td nowrap="" style="background: #e6b8b7; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 83.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="111"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Clinical mastitis</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Subclinical mastitis</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">No mastitis</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Total</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<tr style="height: 15.35pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;"><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 99.1pt;" valign="bottom" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Number of alerts</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 83.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="111"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">30</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 99.25pt;" valign="bottom" width="132"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">47</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 70.85pt;" valign="bottom" width="94"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">150</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: #d4d0c8; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 52.85pt;" valign="bottom" width="70"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">227</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr style="height: 15.35pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;"><td nowrap="" style="background: #e6b8b7; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 99.1pt;" valign="bottom" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Number of repeated alerts</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #e6b8b7; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 83.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="111"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">9</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #e6b8b7; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 99.25pt;" valign="bottom" width="132"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">81</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #e6b8b7; border-bottom: white 1pt solid; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 70.85pt;" valign="bottom" width="94"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">104</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">194 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: #d4d0c8; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 83.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="111"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">39</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: #d4d0c8; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 99.25pt;" valign="bottom" width="132"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">128</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td><td nowrap="" style="background: #f2dcdb; border-bottom: #d4d0c8; border-left: #d4d0c8; border-right: white 1pt solid; border-top: #d4d0c8; height: 15.35pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-right-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid white .5pt; padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 5.4pt; padding-right: 5.4pt; padding-top: 0cm; width: 70.85pt;" valign="bottom" width="94"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">254</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">421</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Only 15 of the 421 quarter alerts were checked by the farmer (3 % of all alerts). From the checked alerts by the farmers, 67 % had clinical mastitis and 13 % had subclinical mastitis. However, the farmers missed quite a large number of mastitis cases. Of the 39 clinical mastitis cases that were found, only 10 were detected by the farmers, which means that 74 % of the clinical mastitis cases were not (yet) detected by the farmers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In order to detect all clinical mastitis, farmers should check all alerts visually. For the 7 farmers in this study this would mean that, on average, 12 cows need to be checked each day. The question that remains is: how bad is it that so many cases of clinical mastitis are missed. Well for official EU milk quality regulations that is bad, because milk that has physical abnormalities should be withheld from delivery. On the other hand, many farmers that manually check the milk off their cows do detect flakes or little clots in the milk, squirt a few times more and deliver the milk as well, because the remaining milk is free of clots. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Is it bad for mastitis control? Well I do not know. Are the missed cases detected a few days later and does treatment at that time have similar cure probabilities? What is the probability of spontaneous cure of these "missed" mastitis cases. Interestingly, given all the fuss about this very interesting, but relatively small piece of work, we are thinking about future research. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Finally, for those interested, the topic will also be presented at the coming <a href="http://www.ecplf2013-leuven.eu/default.aspx" target="_blank">ECPLF</a> conference in Leuven, Belgium.</span></div>
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Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-49291153157081111602013-01-24T00:57:00.000-08:002013-01-24T01:12:13.819-08:00Why large animal veterinarians need to know something about economics<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On many veterinary faculties, the students receive some teaching in economics. Many times this is provided by an agricultural economist who does not speak the language of the veterinarians very well. Students are taught production economics (the basics of it) and the link between their veterinary profession and the economics is far away. Moreover, economics is not seen as a basic need for veterinarians, especially now more and more veterinarians are moving into companion medicine instead of large animal medicine. The rationale for the economics in the veterinary curriculum was lying in the fact that veterinarians should need a bit about the economics of their customers: the farmers. That is not needed when going for companion animal medicine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I started to teach economics at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University (hired in from Wageningen) in 2001, I could teach my own course. The course was a combination of production economics as well as animal health economics. And through the time (we are now two curriculum changes further), the amount of economics has decreased. First my course was combined (and reduced) with another course into Veterinary Herd Health Management and now it is part of the course Epidemiology and Breeding. Besides that basic work there are a few lectures and working groups in the Master phase of the curriculum. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I write this, I am travelling back from Bangkok to the Netherlands. I have given two invited presentations during the </span><a href="http://icvsthailand.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ICVS</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (International Conference for Veterinary Science), held for the 38<sup>th</sup> time and organized by the </span><a href="http://www.thaivma.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thai Veterinary Medical Association</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. It was great to be hosted by a former PhD of our Utrecht group, Chaidate Inchaisri, who is doing interestin</span></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">g disease decision support work now in Thailand at the </span><a href="http://www.chula.ac.th/cuen/faculty/az/vet/index.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chulalongkorn University</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijbqvWjq6fgvHBqKXxUSdv96tpP7qJhhYMm4Q0Q_MOEVFm7Em1HgeAaFp_F6asl0gQxT16RhbrwXPviKYpiOxOq0__RTz3fPDfsXl4YLq-aAr7lYME_iHQSyQF6RmA5eANo0PzxQK5kr8/s1600/IMG-20130116-00391.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijbqvWjq6fgvHBqKXxUSdv96tpP7qJhhYMm4Q0Q_MOEVFm7Em1HgeAaFp_F6asl0gQxT16RhbrwXPviKYpiOxOq0__RTz3fPDfsXl4YLq-aAr7lYME_iHQSyQF6RmA5eANo0PzxQK5kr8/s1600/IMG-20130116-00391.jpg" height="240" oea="true" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The title of my presentations were Econonomic side of veterinary work. The </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/2013-0117-icvs-1-theoretical-considerations" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">first presentation</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> gave some economic backgrounds and reasons that economics are important in the veterinary field. The </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/2013-0117-icvs-2-practical-applications" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">second presentation</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> gave applications of economic calculations on the individual animal, herd and regional level and was meant to make the audience think about possible applications in their own field of work.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was told on forehand that economics is not seen as being important by many Thai veterinarians and I was programmed parallel with two presentations entitled: New era of antibiotic use. I lost the competition :-). My room was far less filled than the other room. I do understand veterinarians that choose to learn more about treatments, because that comes much closer to the day to day work they are doing. But still I also believe that some understanding of economics is essential for veterinarians working in the field of large animal medicine. Why? I’ll tell you. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are two reasons:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">Veterinarians do give advices to farmers on treatments, disease prevention, etc. Veterinarians are aiming at maximum animal health and do believe that their advice that their advice is the best for the farmer. And I do believe that farmers should be able to trust the veterinarians for that as well. However, the goal of a farmer is not to maximize animal health (at least in most cases not). Farmers also want to make a living, have constraints in time and money and the advice should take that into account (optimizing vs maximizing). Therefore some knowledge about the costs of their advice, vs the benefits in terms of improved animal health, but also improved income of the farmer is thus important.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">Veterinarians need to sell their products. For drugs that is easy: in most countries, vets are the only persons that are allowed to sell drugs. There is a tendency, however, that more and more of the income of farmers have to be earned by selling advices, for instance through veterinary herd health and management programs. In order to sell these “products”, the economic consequences (benefits) of these products need to be known. It has been shown that for Dutch farmers economic reasons are an important (but not only) reason for farmers to participate in a veterinary herd health and management program. For farmers not participating, economics were a very important reason not to participate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, should veterinarians know everything about economics? No of course not. I think vets should be able to reason economically and to be able to critically interpret scientific and applied work from people such as myself so that they can support farmers and market their products.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-66402961549459630412013-01-08T12:49:00.000-08:002013-01-09T05:25:26.465-08:00Economics of automatic milkingIn the end of November I was invited by DeLaval (Tumba, Sweden) to give a webinar (seminar which was broadcasted over their internal network so that employees from over the world could join) on two topics. The first topic was economics of production diseases and the second topic was on economics of automatic milking. The first presentation was quite similar to the presentation I gave at the World Buiatrics Conference in Lisbon, Portugal (slides can be found <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/economics-of-production-diseases-wbs2012-lisbon" target="_blank">here</a>). But the second presentation (slides can be found <span id="goog_956424304"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/">here<span id="goog_956424305"></span></a>) had quite some new research results which I will talk a bit further about in this blog. <br />
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I felt in the lion's den because I have been talking and publishing about the economic effects of automatic milking which are not always positive. As you know, automatic milking has become mainstream nowadays. Since the time of the first serious publications on automatic milking the economics of automatic milking has been of interest. These first publications were in the book called: Prospects for Automatic Milking: proceedings of the International Symposium on Prospects for Automatic Milking, a symposium organized by the old IMAG institute. At that time I was working on my PhD and gave a presentation of my own work (on automated diagnosis of mastitis problem, using artificial intelligence), but at that time I was quite skeptical about the prospects of automatic milking: would it really work? Those first robots did not look as elegant as they are now, and the performance was still far from perfect. Obviously I was wrong. <br />
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The economic question has since then not let me loose. A series of scientific publications has been made throughout the years, both for European as well as US circumstances. Most of these publications are so-called normative studies. They use estimations of costs of the milking robot, labour savings, production changes and compare this with an equal farm with a conventional milking parlour. These studies give great indications, but they are always theoretical. In 2007 we published a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030207726255" target="_blank">first studie</a> (carried out by Ronald Bijl as an MSc thesis) on the economics of automatic milking based on real economic data, from an accountancy firm called <a href="http://www.alfa.nl/Pages/Home.aspx" target="_blank">Alfa Accountants en Adviseurs</a>. <span lang="EN-US">In total, 62 farms (31 using an AMS and 31 using
a CMS) were analyzed for the year 2003, using a case control study. Differences
between years 2002 and 2003 also were analyzed, by comparing a sub-group of 16
farms with an AMS and 16 farms with a CMS. Matching was based on the time of
investment in a milking system (same year), the total milk production per year,
and intensity (kg/ha). Results of 2003 showed that the farms with an AMS used
on average 29% less labor than farms with a CMS. In contrast, farms using a CMS
grew faster (<st1:metricconverter productid="37,132 kg" w:st="on">37,132 kg</st1:metricconverter>
of milk quota and 5 dairy cows) than farms with an AMS (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">-</span></span><span lang="EN-US">3,756 kg of milk quota and 0.5 dairy cows) between 2002 and 2003. Dairy farms were
compared financially based on the amount of money that was available for rent,
depreciation, interest, labor and profit (RDILP). The CMS farms had more money
available for RDILP (€ 15,566) than AMS farms. This difference was caused by larger
fixed costs (excluding labor) for the AMS farms, larger contractor costs of €
6,422, and larger costs for gas, water and electricity of € 1,549. Depreciation
and interest costs for automatic milking were not available,but were calculated
based on several assumptions. Assuming larger purchase costs and a shorter
depreciation time for AMS than for CMS, costs for depreciation and interest are
larger for AMS farms than for CMS farms. So from that first study we concluded that automatic milking was more expensive than conventional milking. Which means that, automatic milking can be seen as a luxury good.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US">Very recently, another study was <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030210002596" target="_blank">published</a>. Wilma Steeneveld received a grant from <a href="http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Education-Programmes/PhD-Programme/Graduate-Schools/Wageningen-School-of-Social-Sciences.htm" target="_blank">WASS</a> (the Wageningen Social Sciences Graduate School) and was able to visit prof. Loren Tauer from Cornell University to co-operate on the application of a relatively new method: Efficiency analysis, based on data envelopment analysis (DEA). With this method, you do not study the net income (or something like that), but the efficiency of a farm. The advantage is that not all inputs need to be translated into money, which is sometimes very difficult for inputs such as family labour <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and land</span>. <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;">Data envelopment </span></span><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;">analysis compares the levels of inputs and outputs for a given farm against all other farms in the daaset to dermine the relative efficiency of farms. The efficiency of farms is related to the farm that was the most efficient. Data from another accountancy firm, <a href="http://www.acconavm.nl/" target="_blank">Accon-AVM</a> were used. <span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-size: small;"><span lang="JA" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">There were 63 farms in the data set with an automatic milking system and 337 farms with a conventional milking system, who did not differ from eachother in general farm characteristics. Farms with an automatic milking system had significantly higher capital costs (€12.71 per 100 kg of milk) than farms with a conventional milking system (€10.10 per 100 kg of milk). Although the farms with an AMS had a slightly lower technical efficiency (0.76) than the farms with a conventional milking system, this difference was not significant. This indicates that the farms were not different in their ability to use inputs (capital, labor, cows, and land) to produce outputs (total farm revenues).</span></span></span></div>
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This means that the economic performance of farms with an automatic milking system are almost equal to the farms with a conventional milking system. Good news for DeLaval, Lely and other manufacturers of automatic milking systems.</span></span></span></span>Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-86358111234318712852012-12-12T14:03:00.000-08:002012-12-12T14:03:52.971-08:00Precision dairy farmingToday I am Barcelona, Spain. What for? For the kick-off meeting of a new European Union project called EU-PLF. The PLF is an abbreviation for Precision Livestock Farming. This is a field that is relatively novel and can be defined as the use of technologies to measure physiological, behavior and production indicators on individual animals to improve management. In my opinion it is moving away from managing animals in a group towards managing animals individually. That is great, because increased labor efficiency leads farmers more and more to management animals in groups, while animals have individual requirements. So PLF can make management at the individual animal level possible under labour constraints. Farmers only have to pay attention to those animals that need their attention. The farmer does not have to disturb animals which are doing well. This idea has been identified as management by exception. An interesting <a href="http://extension.psu.edu/animals/dairy/health/nutrition/workshop/previous-workshops/2012/breakout-workshop-sessions/how-precision-dairy-technologies-can-change-your-world/at_download/file" target="_blank">overview paper</a> has recently been written by Jeffrey Bewley, who is working at the University of Kentucky and in my opinion <em>the </em>person in the US working on Precision Dairy Farming.<br />
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In Europe quite a lot of initiatives are taken in the field of PLF. The EU-PLF has started as mentioned before. The preliminary version of the <a href="http://www.eu-plf.eu/" target="_blank">website</a> is available now.In the Netherlands a project named Smart Dairy Farming, supported by a large number of funding agencies and private companies has started last year. A website is not yet available, but will be soon (I will let you know). Private companies are working on applications, for instance in relation to automatic milking systems, but also stand alone systems are becoming available. <br />
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For a number of years, in Europe the <a href="http://www.ecplf2013.eu/" target="_blank">ECPLF conference</a> is organized in, in 2013 for the 6th time and this time in Leuven. In North America, the second <a href="http://precisiondairy.umn.edu/" target="_blank">North American Precision Dairy Farming Conference</a> will be organized in Rochester, Minnesota. It was a great honour for me that I was invited as keynote presenter. Apparently I did not do too bad during my previous keynote presentation at the first North American Precision Dairy Farming Conference. The topic of that presentation was Sensors and Milk Quality, the Quest for the Perfect Alert. It dealt with the difficulties that appear when you want to detect mastitis with sensors. Much research has been done in that field, but still the performance of sensor systems is not ideal. The presentation (and another one presented at the same conference is available on-line (I will add these presentations later, because slideshare.net does not let me upload files at the slow upload speed I have here at this hotel). Moreover, the paper I wrote for that meeting has later been rewritten and has been published in the scientific journal <a href="http://www.google.es/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F1424-8220%2F10%2F9%2F7991%2Fpdf&ei=2tLIULjaI8LPhAfjrYGYCg&usg=AFQjCNHHTL5FDzplRLSsYSoajwaC1aUbjw&sig2=UOX-jef4HZi9tU-D5NYttQ&bvm=bv.1355272958,bs.1,d.d2k" target="_blank">Sensors</a>. <br />
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It is great that precision livestock farming is having so much interest at the moment. There are very large opportunities for this type of technique. You will certainly hear more on this item later on.<br />
Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-19213952363755972342012-10-09T07:02:00.005-07:002012-10-09T07:04:22.787-07:00Animal health on organic dairy farms<div class="FP7standard" style="margin: 3pt 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Arial;">At this moment we are having the kick-off meeting of a new European research project entitled “Improved management practices and alternative treatments to improve animal health in organic farming systems”; in short: IMPRO. Of course it is way too early to provide any research results, but it will be interesting to have a look at the background of this project. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DE-CH;">It is known that consumers (at least in western countries) are becoming increasingly sensitive about health and welfare problems in commercial livestock production systems. They expect their food to be produced with greater respect for the needs of </span><span lang="EN-GB">farm animals. Research has shown that organic farming is often directly associated with an enhanced level of animal health and welfare. For many people, organic farming appears to be a superior alternative to conventional livestock production. Organic farming has committed itself to outperforming conventional farming in a number of areas including animal health. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DA;">The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (<a href="http://www.ifoam.org/" target="_blank">IFOAM</a>) states that organic husbandry focuses on improving animal health and preventing disease through a holistic approach, thus minimising use of synthetic medicine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Now let’s have a look at the requirements of organic dairy farming. Basically these are (please note that requirements may differ between regions in the world; I copied these from <a href="http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livestock/dairy/facts/10-087.htm" target="_blank">OMAFRA</a>): <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Managing crop and pasture land without the use of synthetic fertilizers, genetically engineered (modified) organisms (GMOs), fungicides, herbicides or insecticides for 3 consecutive years<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Feeding 100% organic rations to cows and replacement heifers (with certain exceptions, such as minerals and essential ingredients that cannot be sourced as organic)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Avoiding the use of antibiotics or synthetic hormones - under the supervision of a veterinarian, antibiotic use is permitted twice a year per cow but the withdrawal period must be extended; vaccination, vitamins and electrolytes are allowed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DA;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Providing access to certified organic grazing land throughout the growing season, weather permitting. Pasture must provide at least 30% of the total dry matter intake. The animal should have access to the outside throughout the year.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: DA;">When looking at these demands it becomes apparent that these demands are not really related to improved animal health. It is known that pasturing, if done correctly, is related to better health of dairy cows. On the other hand, the high price of organic feed might lead to suboptimal feeding of cows. The rules with regards to the use of drugs might be related to non-optimal treatment when animals are ill. In short, t</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">he benefits of organic systems are primarily related to environmentally-friendly production. Studies have shown that the health of cattle on organic dairy farms is, on average, not better than the health of cattle on conventional dairy farms. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Arial;">So with this in mind, the real animal health status in organic dairy farming does not in all respect meet consumers’ expectations or their associations. Improvements are therefore crucial to maintain the consumers’ confidence and their willingness to pay premium prices. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The strategic aim of the IMPRO project is to substantially overcome the weak points in current health management strategies on organic dairy farms and increase the possibilities for proactive herd health management. Attention is not only given to developing all kinds of tools but as well to the </span><span lang="EN-GB">farm-specific costs and benefits of recommended measures, to optimise farm-specific allocation of available resources, and to emerge incentives for health improvements. Moreover the motivation and attitudes of the stakeholders (farmer, advisor, and veterinarian) directly involved in health management practice will be studied.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Arial;">More info can be find on the <a href="http://www.dev.impro-dairy.eu/" target="_blank">IMPRO website</a> (which will be filled in due time). </span></span></div>
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Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-68003404032977539592012-06-06T01:54:00.001-07:002012-06-06T01:55:48.365-07:00Keynote lecture economics of production diseasesLast monday, I gave an invited keynote presentation on Economics of production diseases on the <a href="http://wbc-2012.com/index.php/en_US/home" target="_blank">World Buiatrics Conference</a>, which this year is being held in Lisbon, Portugal. The world buiatrics conference is aimed at practising bovine veterinarians. Although I am close to vets, I am not a vet myself so this was the first time I was present at a World Buiatrics Conference, and I have to say, it was/is a pleasant experience. The conference is very well organized, enough practical as well as scientificially interesting content and a good atmosphere. I understood there are about 2500 registrants and you do not notice that during the meeting. For those that are interested, the next meeting will be in 2014 in Cairns (Australia; I could not find a website yet).<br />
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Anyhow, back to the contents, within the session Epidemiology and animal health economics, I had to present a 45 min keynote presentation entitled Economics of Production Diseases. It was great that the room was packed. All seats were full and people were standing in the back to see this presentation. The topic is hot!!! And that is logical, since the milk prices are becoming more and more volatile, farmers are worrying about costs and benefits more and more. Advices of veterinarians costs money, that is clear, but how much can be earned and will improved prevention be cost-effective. <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/economics-of-production-diseases-wbs2012-lisbon" target="_blank">This is the link to this presentation</a>. <br />
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In the presentation I gave an overview of the way we should look at production diseases from an economic point of view. Moreover, I gave our latest results on costs of mastitis, of foot disorders and on metabolic disorders. Moreover, I provided data that shows that these costs vary a lot between farmers. So working with average costs of diseases will not be a good thing, since the average farm does not exist, also not when economics of diseases are regarded. Finally I presented some data on the cost-effectiveness of preventive measures. The details can be found in the presentation, but the bottomline is that the costs of preventive measures are relatively easy to estimate. The benefits, though, are much harder to estimate. Not much scientific literature is available to quantify the effects of implementation of preventive measures. That means we have to use expertise, the so called "guestimates". While we did that we found that not all possible preventive measures are cost-effective. Some of them are, some of them are not. <br />
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To conclude, this means that when proposing improved disease management the advisor:<br />
1. should be aware of the costs of diseases on a specific farm<br />
2. should try to make a farm-specific estimate of the effect of the measure<br />
3 should have some idea about the costs and benefits of these measures to be a good counter-part of the farmer in his/her animal health decisions.<br />
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We have some tools developed ( and I hope we can develop some more in the future) that will support advisors in this task. They can be found the website of the <a href="http://www.bec.wur.nl/UK/Research/Decision+Support+Tools/" target="_blank">Business Economics</a> group of Wageningen University.Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8313197458821385361.post-90373681578809102102012-04-10T04:13:00.000-07:002012-04-10T04:13:19.785-07:00Grazing and dairy productionLast weekend was Easter weekend. For the Hogeveen family this means that on first Easter day (Sunday) we go to church to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and after that spend some time with family. For second Easter day (Monday) it is time to go outside and because of that there are many activities. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://home.versatel.nl/kastinsen/fotos/OoyevaarshorstLeusden3_20080421.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="240" nda="true" src="http://home.versatel.nl/kastinsen/fotos/OoyevaarshorstLeusden3_20080421.jpg" title="Farm Ooyevaarshorst" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old farm Ooyevaarshorst in Leusden</td></tr>
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Since a few years, FrieslandCampina organizes the <a href="http://www.campina.nl/boerderijdagen/zoek-een-boer/" target="_blank">Campina boerderijdagen (farm-days)</a> to bring the people in contact with dairy farming and the source their products. It think that they started four or five years ago with that initiative. This second Easter day, 43 Dutch dairy farms opened their gates for the citizens to see the way milk is produced. This year, Campina thought about adding a new element to the open days: Grazing. For the Dutch dairy sector and its aim towards sustainability, grazing is becoming an important item. See for instance the new quality program <a href="http://www.frieslandcampina.com/english/responsibility/foqus-for-quality.aspx" target="_blank">Foqus</a>. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglQhEELAxjruUoKd_Q2UieZocrcQ43CgLvaN6TfYGeMhmQ5udHwy-mibxLDReqGG0tHUVSvv-YQH3diGM-xBtAgglUAbX_F44SrMuai9zeRg7B1FZgR9u8H3ztCnrfB9r7AwTUsErBm30/s1600/P1100277-kopie_1322135366.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglQhEELAxjruUoKd_Q2UieZocrcQ43CgLvaN6TfYGeMhmQ5udHwy-mibxLDReqGG0tHUVSvv-YQH3diGM-xBtAgglUAbX_F44SrMuai9zeRg7B1FZgR9u8H3ztCnrfB9r7AwTUsErBm30/s200/P1100277-kopie_1322135366.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new free stall barn</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgfwdHg9DPmomqethKJb2x_p0qN1H715AWjvjflr1OT9tE2mnAe7hGf1c6g5b00eo9m4BQBB2iQPsXzi4ke9Aim0E2ArSfYrnEbB_KzPEdpvG7NVilCJOqHUofRc12bhSj5op1fJZWA24/s1600/P1110057-kopie_1326890178.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgfwdHg9DPmomqethKJb2x_p0qN1H715AWjvjflr1OT9tE2mnAe7hGf1c6g5b00eo9m4BQBB2iQPsXzi4ke9Aim0E2ArSfYrnEbB_KzPEdpvG7NVilCJOqHUofRc12bhSj5op1fJZWA24/s200/P1110057-kopie_1326890178.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Place for 80 dairy cows </td></tr>
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The open farms were farms that applied grazing and at exactly 12 AM the cows were let outside for the first time this spring. Those of you that have ever seen that: the first time that cows go out is great to watch. Cows are eager to go out, are partly blinded by the outside light and go out running and juming. All in all a great sight.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0IXygYksRVhmurL8wrxMG4qaFZeH7OBVp37Zkfo-zzLmuzU18f6UBgk74HTr_NV-4bje33KVNHM1m1AsJKKvnebOdjMc18C2xibTAPemlTJZTcjZyQShm-o9wtuKoTnaDn5KJuneMmB8/s1600/Leusden-20120409-00151.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0IXygYksRVhmurL8wrxMG4qaFZeH7OBVp37Zkfo-zzLmuzU18f6UBgk74HTr_NV-4bje33KVNHM1m1AsJKKvnebOdjMc18C2xibTAPemlTJZTcjZyQShm-o9wtuKoTnaDn5KJuneMmB8/s320/Leusden-20120409-00151.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> One of the open farms was (again) the farm, named Ooyevaarshorst of the <a href="http://www.campina.nl/onze-boeren/familie-wassenaar/" target="_blank">Wassenaar family in Leusden</a>. They are neighbours of my parents, so the plan was to have a look at this open farm and be there at noon. The morning was quite relaxed and we were a little late, but we could make it easy at noon. Wrong thinking!!!! We entered the small road leading to the Wassenaar farm and to our enourmous surprise, it was filled with cars and people all going to see the cows going out for the first time!! This despite the lousy weather, because it was raining cats and dogs. I understood that more than 3,500 people were present.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj74jzeu293HqTbeR3Ydg5JjscXjHj_wTHOtgKhwyyRJo5GxfzdE8EjKF-rsYDTJDOys9Twra_EPVUhI3TpkoDMKxgBAddMhF8S2Z9ZNj3kG2u3llXj5hwQ68gBjFk8iZ6gokiZnBcyhT4/s1600/Leusden-20120409-00158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj74jzeu293HqTbeR3Ydg5JjscXjHj_wTHOtgKhwyyRJo5GxfzdE8EjKF-rsYDTJDOys9Twra_EPVUhI3TpkoDMKxgBAddMhF8S2Z9ZNj3kG2u3llXj5hwQ68gBjFk8iZ6gokiZnBcyhT4/s320/Leusden-20120409-00158.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpFhkebJMKYp8xRK3g68tHfBrOzvmjVM-fGSfi13jVoqbHOT1soPGfh8V5yntjr_g9H0wUb2igxdkLxf4h1fdZCZ8fR6IgjaDnyIY97xbF36Kxyd5qEKU6S3VrfeYSa0mt0EClrCgMYDE/s1600/Leusden-20120409-00155.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpFhkebJMKYp8xRK3g68tHfBrOzvmjVM-fGSfi13jVoqbHOT1soPGfh8V5yntjr_g9H0wUb2igxdkLxf4h1fdZCZ8fR6IgjaDnyIY97xbF36Kxyd5qEKU6S3VrfeYSa0mt0EClrCgMYDE/s320/Leusden-20120409-00155.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> The 70 Red Holstein dairy cows of Niels Wassenaar going outside for the first time in 2012, watched by a large crowd of citizens.<br />
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Why this story on my, more ore less science oriented blog on Animal Health Management. As you might know, animal health is related to animal welfare and one of the reasons we are spending more and more efforts to control production diseases is the fact that production diseases are related to welfare of animals. Of course there are many other elements in animal husbandry besides diseases that are related to animal welfare. Grazing is one of these items. It enables cows to explore their natural behaviour much better than in a barn. Moreover it is good to prevent diseases as well, think about claw health and the reduced infectious pressure in pastures in relation to barns. <br />
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However, grazing is more and more difficult to combine with modern dairy farming, where herd seizes are larger, milk production levels are higher and more cows are milked with automatic milking systems. Therefore, there is a tendency amongst Dutch dairy farmers to keep cows inside year around. In science there is a debate whether this is bad or not for welfare, whether we can design barn systems that are as good for cow welfare as grazing. In a Dutch project: "De koe en wij", farmers are followed in their decisions with regard to grazing. At their <a href="http://www.koeenwij.nl/" target="_blank">website</a>, much info on grazing and its effects, can be found. There are all kind of arguments that can be made in favour of grazing or against grazing. Scientists might even "prove" that certain barn systems are as good for the animal welfare as grazing, but we are forgetting the perception of the Dutch citizen. Cows have to be outside: that is natural. Period. <br />
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The success of these types of open days opened my eyes. I am afraid that we can try to "educate" the citizens as much as we want, but we will not succeed in convincing them that a "good" system without grazing is possible. Milk and milk products of Dutch original that are sold in Dutch supermarkets, should be originating from cows that have been grazing. The perception of foreign citizens and consumers might be a little different, so this might require different sources of milk for different customers. Demand-driven milk production.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFU8yAgnv3YqOg3joLwW3Dg0DtZDHO-ni9jjd67JaRhBVVCln7KWXpT3laD6B0bSbMY3Ii2l0Dgw_CmAwXFqvzz2RLuR14tl4aaUnFb8OmXilpxOmio5C81I2heunA704fx2W1DjMpl5s/s1600/Leusden-20120409-00165.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFU8yAgnv3YqOg3joLwW3Dg0DtZDHO-ni9jjd67JaRhBVVCln7KWXpT3laD6B0bSbMY3Ii2l0Dgw_CmAwXFqvzz2RLuR14tl4aaUnFb8OmXilpxOmio5C81I2heunA704fx2W1DjMpl5s/s320/Leusden-20120409-00165.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Finally, the visitors to the open farm day were lucky: a cow was delivering a young calf. I can imagine that Niels Wassenaar was quite nervous, doing this delivery with so many eyes watching, but luckily, the delivery went easy and a healthy new calf was born.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpY8tgH6_Iycny-RGzlSE6AH0zD9JVMyml3BGxeQDFMysqruAU4WIfPzRRAJMWJbg0DH6yQljyO4onZb8jJYG7Pp3vxbkTjfAfDFuf17XIM81tMoK2RZOUDelqprhsQdNtKELLH-9mxs/s1600/Leusden-20120409-00163.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpY8tgH6_Iycny-RGzlSE6AH0zD9JVMyml3BGxeQDFMysqruAU4WIfPzRRAJMWJbg0DH6yQljyO4onZb8jJYG7Pp3vxbkTjfAfDFuf17XIM81tMoK2RZOUDelqprhsQdNtKELLH-9mxs/s320/Leusden-20120409-00163.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My daughter trying to get a glimpse of the delivery of a calf</td></tr>
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Henk Hogeveenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12099989046325103801noreply@blogger.com0