Evaluating the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Mechanism and Its Risk Factors in England’s Cattle Farms

Tabassom Sedighi and Liz Varga
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Tabassom Sedighi: Centre for Environmental and Agricultural Informatics, School of Water, Energy and Environment (SWEE), Cranfield University, Cranfield MK43 0AL, UK
Liz Varga: Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UCL, London WC1E 6BT, UK

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 7, 1-24

Abstract: Controlling bovine tuberculosis (bTB) disease in cattle farms in England is seen as a challenge for farmers, animal health, environment and policy-makers. The difficulty in diagnosis and controlling bTB comes from a variety of factors: the lack of an accurate diagnostic test which is higher in specificity than the currently available skin test; isolation periods for purchased cattle; and the density of active badgers, especially in high-risk areas. In this paper, to enable the complex evaluation of bTB disease, a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) is designed with the help of domain experts and available historical data. A significant advantage of this approach is that it represents bTB as a dynamic process that evolves periodically, capturing the actual experience of testing and infection over time. Moreover, the model demonstrates the influence of particular risk factors upon the risk of bTB breakdown in cattle farms.

Keywords: evaluation; infectious disease modelling; dynamic bayesian network; bovine tuberculosis; sensitivity analysis; planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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