Countries in the Americas play a vital role in global livestock and aquaculture production. With international trade of livestock and aquaculture products becoming an important source of income for countries, there has been an increased interest in using animal health economics for advocacy and allocation of resources. This article discusses the development of a new Collaborating Centre for the Economics of Animal Health and the applications of the Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) framework in the Americas region. Incentives for the increased use of economics in animal health decision-making and examples from the Americas region are examined. The article then discusses the newly formed World Organisation for Animal Health Collaborating Centre in the Americas region. Finally, it reviews two ongoing case studies that are implementing the GBADs framework in Peru and the United States of America.

The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme's key objective â€" to provide a systematic approach to determine the burden of animal disease â€" is as relevant to aquatic as to terrestrial animal production systems. However, to date GBADs methods have mainly been applied to terrestrial animal production systems. The challenges in applying GBADs methods, notably the Animal Health Loss Envelope (AHLE), vary considerably by production system. The authors demonstrate how the AHLE can be calculated for rainbow trout production in England and Wales and acknowledge that its application to other systems (e.g. hatchery production, polyculture and no-feed mollusc production) is more complex. For example, in small scale tropical fish production the impact of suboptimal nutrition on production would need to be addressed. Recirculating aquaculture systems have inherent high levels of biosecurity and disease control, and thus low levels of disease. Removing the capital and running costs associated with biosecurity fundamentally changes the system and invalidates the AHLE calculation. Lack of data from many systems, notably small-scale tropical finfish farming, means that expert opinion will be needed to support the application of GBADs methods. While calculation of the AHLE is the focus of this article, it should be noted that attribution to causes and value chain modelling are needed to generate data on the wider societal impact of aquatic animal diseases (and possible interventions), which governments require to support decision-making about resource allocation.

The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme aims to quantify the economic and broader societal costs of animal disease, providing information to policy-makers and other stakeholders to inform investments in animal health. Within this context, GBADs'Indonesian case study brings together a multidisciplinary and multi-national team to pilot the GBADs methodology in the Asiaâ€"Pacific region. This article describes the process of building a case study and, based on that experience, summarises key learnings to inform the development of future case studies and similar projects. Recommendations focus on the steps required to build successful partnerships to deliver a complex programme of work; the authors highlight the need to consider the local context in aligning project and country priorities, the importance of early engagement with a range of stakeholders, and the need for regular and clear communication within the project team.

Senegal is a West African country with both extensive animal production systems, representative of the environmental, economic and animal health constraints specific to the Sahel region, and thriving commercial poultry and dairy production. An exploratory study was conducted in Senegal between 2021 and 2022 as a prelude to a case study of the Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme. An overview of existing animal production systems as well as the main priorities and issues in animal health on a national level was developed. A national workshop gathering representatives from the livestock production and academic sectors took place in Dakar in June 2022 with the objective of jointly developing a case study. The participants prioritised pastoralist production systems for cattle and agropastoral systems for small ruminants for the application of the GBADs programme. Through a series of activities, the participants highlighted the health, environmental, economic and socio-political challenges surrounding these systems, all of which limit their contribution to the well-being of pastoralist households, consumers and other stakeholders. While Senegal has in the past hosted a large number of research and cooperative projects on these two livestock systems, participants noted difficulties in obtaining, centralising and harmonising the existing data. This exploratory study led to the funding of a focused case study of the agropastoral small-ruminant sector that was carried out in 2023 in partnership with national and international organisations.

The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme follows a multistage process to produce disease burden estimates in livestock and farmed aquatic animal production systems. The GBADs programme has broad goals of inclusivity, transparency and rigour. Meeting those goals means providing users of all levels of technical expertise with a clear explanation of the programme's output. In this way, the meaning and limitations of those results are clearly communicated, minimising the risk of misinterpretation. The first published estimates of disease burden have been calculated at farm level using a new metric called the Animal Health Loss Envelope. This metric estimates the cost of lost productivity and expenditure on disease control for profit-maximising producers by comparing current system performance to a hypothetical ‘ideal health'scenario. This ideal is a farm-specific concept and is critically different from an ideal health state when physiologically defined. The metric and its key concepts are described in this article.

Assessing the economic value of livestock such as cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens and fish can offer information about their financial performance and economic importance at farm, national and global scale. Such information is needed for decision-making surrounding livestock finance, investment and strategic development. The aim of this study was to provide an overview of the key livestock valuation methods and associated data requirements. The study was conducted using a literature review. Five key livestock valuation methods were identified and described: historical costs, net current market value, replacement costs, net present value and cost of production. The findings of this study may be of interest to livestock scientists, veterinarians, policy-makers and other stakeholders who aim to assess the economic value of livestock herds. The Global Burden of Animal Diseases programme relied on the outcomes of this study to identify methods for the estimation of the economic value of livestock at the global scale and for its Ethiopia and Indonesia case studies.

In a world characterised by data deserts and data swamps, translating evidence into actionable policies and practices is not easy. This article addresses this challenge through the lens of evidence emerging from the Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) initiative. It emphasises the need for an intentional approach that connects research information with the specific needs of decision-makers and identifies specific impact pathways associated with different groups of decision-makers. The GBADs programme aims to support animal health decisions, and the authors outline the diverse landscape of decision-makers in this field, encompassing the public and private sectors, livestock keepers, civil society and international development agencies. Key issues such as disease prioritisation and lobbying are also discussed. The authors propose an ‘evidence ecosystem'approach, one that understands data users and their interactions, for analysing the needs of decision-makers, and framing GBADs offerings according to these needs. Two case studies, a recently concluded global case study of disease prioritisation decision-making and an ongoing policy analysis and needs assessment for GBADs in Indonesia, are presented to demonstrate how evidence ecosystem analysis and audience segmentation could be used to tailor GBADs information offerings for different decision-making groups. The article concludes by recommending that GBADs'future applications prioritise information offerings, adapt them to decision-makers'needs and consider how different segments of decision-makers will utilise the information to achieve real-world impacts.

Attracting and sustaining investment in Veterinary Services and animal health programmes from national government budgets, development aid and grants, and philanthropic donors requires economic rationale using relevant, reliable and validated analytical approaches. The complex interwoven relationships between animal health, livestock husbandry systems, national food security, global health security and environmental sustainability emphasise the importance of improving data governance and stewardship and applying economic analysis to understand animal disease burdens. These efforts should enable prioritised investment of limited resources and effective monitoring of the impact of programmes over time. Data governance and stewardship capacities are fundamental to development, implementation and performance monitoring of evidence-based policies in animal health. There are challenges in data availability for national and subnational livestock populations in different sectors, for disease incidence and prevalence, and for animal health expenditure in support of optimised allocation of scarce resources, be they finance, land, labour, or management attention and policy focus. Animal health data systems governance and stewardship and economic analysis are core skills for Veterinary Services in developing and applying evidence-based policy, but capability probably varies among World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) Members. The WOAH Performance of Veterinary Services programme has several critical competencies that are relevant to economics of animal health and to data governance and stewardship, but these have not yet been targeted for coordinated capacity development. Implementation of publicâ€"private partnership approaches for animal health programmes creates increasing expectations of robust data and methods for prioritisation, options analysis, and assessing impacts and costs. Experience and examples from national systems in New Zealand, Australia, Ethiopia and Indonesia illustrate current challenges associated with prioritisation of animal health programmes using economic analysis. The Global Burden of Animal Diseases programme intends to support WOAH Members and partners to develop capacities for and standardise approaches to economic analysis and prioritisation in animal health programmes.

The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme aims to assess the impact of animal health on agricultural animals, livestock production systems and associated communities worldwide. As part of the objectives of GBADs'Animal Health Ontology theme, the programme reviewed conceptual frameworks, ontologies and classification systems in biomedical science. The focus was on data requirements in animal health and the connections between animal health and human and environmental health. In May 2023, the team conducted searches of recognised repositories of biomedical ontologies, including BioPortal, Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology Foundry, and Ontology Lookup Service, to identify animal and livestock ontologies and those containing relevant concepts. Sixteen ontologies were found, covering topics such as surveillance, anatomy and genetics. Notable examples include the Animal Trait Ontology for Livestock, the Animal Health Surveillance Ontology, the National Center for Biotechnology Information Taxonomy and the Uberon Multi-Species Anatomy Ontology. However, some ontologies lacked class definitions for a significant portion of their classes. The review highlights the need for domain evidence to support proposed models, critical appraisal of external ontologies before reuse, and external expert reviews along with statistical tests of agreements. The findings from this review informed the structural framework, concepts and rationales of the animal health ontology for GBADs. This animal health ontology aims to increase the interoperability and transparency of GBADs data, thereby enabling estimates of the impacts of animal diseases on agriculture, livestock production systems and associated communities globally.

Quantifying the impact of poor animal health outcomes on human health represents a complex challenge. Using the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) metric as an endpoint, this article discusses how animal health outcomes can impact humans through three key processes: directly through zoonotic disease, indirectly via changes in yields and their impacts on nutrition and wealth, and finally, through indirect features associated with the agricultural industry, such as pharmaceuticals and climate change. For each process, the current state of the art and feasibility of global DALY-associated estimates are discussed. Existing frameworks for zoonoses already consider some key pathogens; ensuring completeness in the pathogens considered and consistency in methodological decisions is an important next step. For diet, risk factor frameworks enable a calculation of attributable DALYs; however, significant economic methodological developments are needed to ensure that local production changes are appropriately mapped to both local and global changes in dietary habits. Concerning wealth-related impacts, much work needs to be done on method development. Industry-related impacts require a focus on key research topics, such as attribution studies for animal antimicrobial resistance contributing to human outcomes. For climate change, a critical next step is identifying to what extent associated industry emissions are amenable to change should animal health outcomes improve. Allocation of finite funds to improve animal health must also consider the downstream impact on humans. Leveraging DALYs enables comparisons with other human health-related decisions and would represent a transformative way of approaching animal health decision-making should the obstacles in this article be addressed and new methods be developed.

This article focuses on identifying the loss of production and costs (or lack thereof) associated with livestock health as well as animal disease externalities, with the intent to estimate economy-wide burden. It limits its scope to terrestrial livestock and aquaculture, wherein economic burden is predominately determined by market forces. Losses and costs are delineated into both direct losses and costs and indirect losses and costs, as well as ex post costs and ex ante costs. These costs include not only private expenditures but also public expenditures related to the prevention of, treatment of, and response to livestock disease. This distinction is important because a primary role of government is to mitigate externalities. The article then discusses market impacts and investments. Finally, it provides selected examples and illustrative observations and discusses future directions for research and application.

The Global Burden of Animal Diseases provides an analytical framework to measure the overall health of various farmed animal populations, to estimate the farm-level burden of different diseases, incorporating production losses due to morbidity and mortality as well as health expenditure, and to identify the wider economic and human health impacts of animal disease. Attributing the burden of animal diseases to specific causes or groups of causes requires methodological choices, including the classification of diseases and the resulting health states that manifest in loss of production. The aim of this article is to address the key challenges in the process of estimating farm-level disease burden, including ambiguity in terminology, data availability and collation, and adjustments for comorbidity. Using infection with zoonotic Brucella spp. in small ruminants as an aetiological cause of disease and abortion as a sequela of multiple diseases, practical examples of the framework are provided. Cause-specific attribution of the burden of animal disease captures temporal and spatial trends, an understanding of which is essential for planning, monitoring and evaluating animal health programmes and disease interventions.

The presence of transmissible disease in livestock has a major impact on welfare and economics in animal and public health. A lack of data enables the spread of diseases due to misinformed decision-making on prevention and control. Low-resource settings face challenges in providing data, turning data availability into a development issue. For this study, a large dataset (n = 997) was collected on prevalence and seroprevalence estimates on viral (n = 224), bacterial (n = 83) and parasitic (n = 690) diseases in backyard chickens in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). These estimates originate from 306 studies identified during the screening phase of a systematic literature review. An attempt was made to classify the studies according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations'classification system for family poultry production systems. Of the studies, 98.7% (302/306) focused on a single poultry production system, while 1.3% (4/306) targeted two different production systems. Within the group of studies that covered one production system, 85.4% (258/302) were classified as ‘small extensive scavenging or extensive scavenging,'‘small extensive scavenging'and/or ‘extensive scavenging'. In addition, 52% (159/306) of the studies did not report information on chicken breed type. No data were found on any relevant disease for 56.9% (78/137) of LMICs, signifying a potential data gap. Of the estimates on viral and bacterial diseases, 71.0% (218/307) corresponded to diseases notifiable to the World Organisation for Animal Health, highlighting a tendency to measure disease occurrence for diseases relevant to trade. The latter might not necessarily be priority diseases for the producers, however. Furthermore, 72.3% (222/307) of the estimates originate from random samples and could be used to estimate prevalence in backyard chickens using imputation methods, thus bridging the data gap.

Misuse and overuse of antimicrobials in livestock production are identified as drivers for antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To improve decision-making concerning livestock health, it is important to understand the impact of AMR in livestock and aquaculture, within and beyond farm level, as well as expenditure on antimicrobial use (AMU). Such understanding provides grounds for systematic disease prioritisation and establishes a baseline for understanding the value of different strategies to mitigate animal health problems and for the monitoring and evaluation of the impact of those strategies. Yet limited data availability and quality surrounding AMU and AMR create barriers to furthering the knowledge of such impact. These data constraints are also more prevalent in contexts that lack the necessary resources to develop and maintain systematic and centralised data collection and collation systems. Even in regions with robust AMU and AMR monitoring systems in place, data limitations remain, such that the expenditure on antimicrobials and impacts of AMR remain unclear. Additionally, the current research funding strategies have been less focused on primary data collection, adding further barriers to filling the data void and reducing the global AMU/AMR knowledge gap. To work around the data scarcity and leverage previous and ongoing research efforts, it is vital to gain comprehensive knowledge of the people, projects and research consortia dedicated to the topic of AMU/AMR.

The estimation of the global burden of animal diseases requires the integration of multidisciplinary models: economic, statistical, mathematical and conceptual. The output of one model often serves as input for another; therefore, consistency of the model components is critical. The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) Informatics team aims to strengthen the scientific foundations of modelling by creating tools that address challenges related to reproducibility, as well as model, data and metadata interoperability. Aligning with these aims, several tools are under development: a) GBADs'Trusted Animal Information Portal (TAIL) is a data acquisition platform that enhances the discoverability of data and literature and improves the user experience of acquiring data. TAIL leverages advanced semantic enrichment techniques (natural language processing and ontologies) and graph databases to provide users with a comprehensive repository of livestock data and literature resources. b) The interoperability of GBADs'models is being improved through the development of an R-based modelling package and standardisation of parameter formats. This initiative aims to foster reproducibility, facilitate data sharing and enable seamless collaboration among stakeholders. c) The GBADs Knowledge Engine is being built to foster an inclusive and dynamic user community by offering data in multiple formats and providing user-friendly mechanisms to garner feedback from the community. These initiatives are critical in addressing complex challenges in animal health and underscore the importance of combining scientific rigour with user-friendly interfaces to empower global efforts in safeguarding animal populations and public health.

Food systems comprise interconnected webs of processes that together transform inputs (land, labour, water, nutrients and genetics, to mention just a few) into outputs such as nutrition and revenue for human societies. Perfect systems do not exist; rather, global food systems operate in the presence of hazards, biotic and abiotic alike, and under the constraint of limited resources to mitigate these hazards. There are, therefore, inefficiencies in these systems, which lead to losses in terms of monetary, nutritional, health and environmental values and create additional negative externalities in the health, social and environmental spaces. Health hazards in the food system do not respect arbitrary distinctions between the crop and livestock sectors, which are highly interconnected. These linkages exist where one sector provides inputs to another or through substitution effects where supply in one sector influences demand in another. The One Health approach advocates investigating the intersectoral hazards in a highly interdisciplinary manner. This article provides a conceptual framework for integrating the methodologies developed by the Global Burden of Crop Loss and Global Burden of Animal Diseases initiatives to generate burden estimates for hazards in food systems that better account for interconnectivity and foster an improved understanding of food systems that is aligned with the interdisciplinary nature of the One Health approach. A case study related to maize and poultry sector linkages in the wider context of public and environmental health is presented.

Animals play a central role in human livelihoods and welfare. Animal diseases have a great impact on the benefits humans derive from animals and can also pose a risk to human health. Better control of animal diseases generates wider societal benefits, including reducing the climate and ecological impacts of livestock and improving animal welfare. To better understand the scale of investment justified for the control and prevention of animal disease, the wide-ranging impacts of disease on animal production and health must be measured. The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme is quantifying animal disease burden from the local to global levels. The GBADs programme includes country case studies for national- and local-level analysis. Ethiopia is the first case study country in which GBADs methods have been applied. GBADs'Ethiopia case study consists of three activity areas: i) stakeholder engagement; ii) livestock disease burden estimation, including data collection, analytics, evidence generation and communication; and iii) capacity building in animal health economics. At the start of the case study, various stakeholder communication platforms were used to familiarise stakeholders with GBADs and engage their support in various ways, including data access, and, through this engagement, to ensure the programme tools and outputs were relevant and useful to their needs. Existing data were retrieved from multiple sources and used to estimate disease burden. This process involved multiple steps, including estimation of biomass and economic value, the Animal Health Loss Envelope (farm-level disease burden), wider economic impacts and attribution of the disease burden to different levels of causes. This was carried out for major livestock species (cattle, sheep, goats and poultry) in Ethiopia. Capacity building on animal health economics was carried out for GBADs end users to increase competence in utilising animal health economic evidence, including GBADs outputs. This article documents experiences of the implementation of these activities in the GBADs Ethiopia case study.

Estimates of livestock biomass can be used as denominators in disease burden estimates, in addition to informing assessments of resource use and environmental impacts. This article explores the challenges of accurately estimating biomass across different scales and data ecosystems, with a particular focus on the use of biomass in the Global Burden of Animal Diseases programme. The greatest of these challenges is a lack of subgroup (breed, age, sex)-specific data on populations and liveweights at national and subnational level. This can be overcome by using global datasets and generic estimates of liveweight for each species, though this approach fails to account for the diversity of livestock systems.

This article reviews the Observatory of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH, founded as OIE), including its objectives, direction and progress achieved so far. It explains the benefits offered by this data-driven programme in improving access to data and information analysis while ensuring confidentiality. In addition, the authors examine the challenges that the Observatory faces and its inextricable link to the Organisation's data management. The development of the Observatory is of the utmost importance, not only for its relevance to the development of WOAH International Standards and their implementation worldwide, but also because of its role as one of the drivers of WOAH's digital transformation plan. This transformation is essential, given the major role of information technologies in supporting regulation for animal health, animal welfare and veterinary public health.