Quantitative Assessment of the Risk of Release of Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Virus via Export of Bull Semen from Israel

A. Meyer, L. Zamir, A. Ben Yair Gilboa, B. Gelman, D. U. Pfeiffer and T. Vergne

Risk Analysis, 2017, vol. 37, issue 12, 2350-2359

Abstract: Various foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) virus strains circulate in the Middle East, causing frequent episodes of FMD outbreaks among Israeli livestock. Since the virus is highly resistant in semen, artificial insemination with contaminated bull semen may lead to the infection of the receiver cow. As a non‐FMD‐free country with vaccination, Israel is currently engaged in trading bull semen only with countries of the same status. The purpose of this study was to assess the risk of release of FMD virus through export of bull semen in order to estimate the risk for FMD‐free countries considering purchasing Israeli bull semen. A stochastic risk assessment model was used to estimate this risk, defined as the annual likelihood of exporting at least one ejaculate of bull semen contaminated with viable FMD virus. A total of 45 scenarios were assessed to account for uncertainty and variability around specific parameter estimates and to evaluate the effect of various mitigation measures, such as performing a preexport test on semen ejaculates. Under the most plausible scenario, the annual likelihood of exporting bull semen contaminated with FMD virus had a median of 1.3 * 10−7 for an export of 100 ejaculates per year. This corresponds to one infected ejaculate exported every 7 million years. Under the worst‐case scenario, the median of the risk rose to 7.9 * 10−5, which is equivalent to the export of one infected ejaculate every 12,000 years. Sensitivity analysis indicated that the most influential parameter is the probability of viral excretion in infected bulls.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12799

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:riskan:v:37:y:2017:i:12:p:2350-2359

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().