Production Diseases Reduce the Efficiency of Dairy Production: A Review of the Results, Methods, and Approaches Regarding the Economics of Mastitis

Mastitis is the most important production disease in dairy farming, leading to considerable inefficiency in production. In 1992, an important paper describing a simple but very useful economic framework for production diseases in animal farming was published. In a systemic literature search, 77 articles were found on the economics of mastitis. Throughout the years, little progress has been made to improve the economic framework regarding production diseases in animal farming, but methodological progress was made in the biological aspect of bioeconomic models. Research focused on the failure costs of mastitis and cost-benefit analyses of cow-level decisions (treatments). The average failure costs of mastitis were $US131 per cow per year. Future economic research should focus more on the utilization of currentlyavailable large databases. The economic framework should be extended toward mastitis as an externality of dairy production (welfare), the externalities of optimal use of chemical and pharmaceutical compounds (antimicrobials), and explaining farmers’ decisions regarding mastitis.