Investigating the impact of farmer behaviour and farmer-led control of infectious disease outbreaks in livestock

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Combating infectious diseases requires the cooperation of all involved parties; whether this is parents vaccinating their child, use of bed-nets to reduce the risk of vector-borne infections or the actions of farmers to protect their livestock. These behaviours can be conceptualized using ideas from game-theory, where each individual is trying to minimize their losses (e.g. escape infection for the minimum effort). We build on such ideas to address key factors controlling infectious diseases within the livestock industry, and the inevitable tension between optimal farmer behaviour and nationally optimal policies. This is achieved by bringing together modern quantitative tools from social sciences and state-of-the-art simulation modelling, based on an in-depth knowledge of livestock disease epidemiology.
We will develop stochastic spatial models of livestock infectious disease spread through the farming landscape, together with the probabilistic reaction of farmers to their locally perceived risk. Our first assumption will be that farmers react perfectly rationally and fully optimize their behaviour. However, this will be refined through formal elicitation to capture heterogeneity and uncertainty in farmer behaviour. We will then build on our existing strengths in modelling foot-and-mouth disease and bovine tuberculosis to incorporate data from the elicitation study to predict the likely impact of realistic responsive farmer behaviour in the control of these diseases. We will also develop new models for bovine viral diarrhoea virus, which is a growing burden to the UK cattle industry and for which a voluntary national control campaign has recently started.
Our overarching hypothesis is that by quantifying the heterogeneity in the reaction of farmers and incorporating this into predictive models, we can provide stakeholders with a better understanding of the need for nationally-led action, the compliance of the farming industry and the probability of eradication.

Given the applied nature of the research in this project, obtaining impact is a key priority area and will be achieved through a dedicated work-package, which will interface with stakeholders to both shape our research questions and disseminate our findings. A wide variety of individuals and groups within the UK (and overseas) will directly benefit from our findings.
Firstly, a range of policy makers and associated organisations will be consulted during the early stages of our investigation to help shape the control measures that are assessed for each disease. We will communicate regularly with these groups who will also be given access to our findings through policy-ready documentation that outlines our main results in clear non-scientific language. These groups include government agencies (such as the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Animal and Plant Health Agency) and commercial organisations (such as the National Farmers Union and the Dairy Levy Board) as well as international agencies (such as FAO and EuFMD). These groups will benefit from a greater ability to assess the interaction between policy recommendations, economics and farmer behaviour for a range of prominent livestock infections. In addition, they will be able to access and utilise graphical versions of our code, providing more intuitive insights into the predicted epidemiological impact of different policies. This will help to ensure that future policy decisions or practical recommendations are appropriate for the disease, region under consideration and based on the latest epidemiological forecasts. We will also develop a project website in year 1 that will be regularly updated throughout the grant to provide the most up to date information regarding the progress of our research. The investigators in both Warwick and Nottingham have a long and excellent track record of working with and supplying advice to such organisations that will assist in disseminating this information.
Secondly, those commercially involved with cattle farming (both farmers and veterinarians) in the UK will benefit from a greater understanding of the risks that different activities pose in terms of bringing infection into the farm environment and intervention strategies that may reduce the risk of disease spread. Cattle diseases such as food-and-mouth disease (FMD), bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) and bovine tuberculosis (bTB) can be financially damaging to the individual farmer and the industry as a whole, and therefore it is vital that our recommendations to government are resonant with the practicalities of the industry. Similarly, industry support for new policies and recommendations is vital for their success. Our aim is that the cattle farming industry will benefit from focused and practical advice from this project that can reduce future disease risk, thereby safeguarding an important industry while ensuring the population at large has continued access to cheap and safe food sources. A large component of this project is focused towards elicitation of behaviour from farmers; however we very much view this as a two-way process, with graphical models used throughout to communicate our findings to farmers and veterinarians that we hope will help to inform these stakeholders regarding the most effective behaviour that they should adopt in the event of future infectious disease outbreaks. Finally, the public will benefit from greater food security, with a livestock industry that is less susceptible to the economic and epidemiological consequences of infection.
Our over-arching aim is to develop a quantitative understanding of the role played by individual farmers in the control of cattle disease outbreaks and to assess when appropriate industry-led intervention strategies can reduce disease burden. This aim, together with our dedication to interact with a range of stakeholders, should provide substantial and sustained benefits to the UK farming industry.