Why the use of preventative treatment for livestock diseases is not always cost-effective: a casestudyof an economic game theory model of sheep scab prophylaxis

摘要

Infectious diseases in livestock cause losses of millions of pounds per year. Using prophylaxis to targetindividual diseases can reduce disease incidence (Hosie & Clark 2007). However, this can also lead to unnecessary costsfor a farmer (Nixon et al., 2017). Therefore, the relative costs and risks of a disease should be examined before makingprophylaxis decisions, as demonstrated by Nixon et al. (2017) in a game theory model of sheep scab.