Emergency Vaccination to Control Foot-and-mouth Disease: Implications of its Inclusion as a U.S. Policy Option

Emergency animal vaccination has been used in recent international foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks, but current USDA policy favors emergency vaccination use only if standard culling practices alone may not be enough to control spread of the disease. Using simulation modeling, we examine implications of standard culling plus emergency ring vaccination strategies on animal loss and economic welfare loss compared to a standard culling base. Additionally, breakeven risk aversion coefficient analysis is used to examine emergency vaccination as a risk management strategy. Results indicate that response enhanced with emergency vaccination is inferior to standard culling under short diagnostic delays because it causes, on average, greater animal and national economic welfare losses. We find that emergency vaccination does have merit as a risk management strategy, as it can reduce the likelihood of an extreme outbreak.