Costs related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy control in the Czech Republic in 2001-2008

This paper pays attention to and analyses two of the economic impacts of the BSE occurrence in the Czech Republic, namely the financial compensations to the farmers whose herds had been affected and the costs of animal killing and carcass disposal in the rendering plant. Between February 2001 and the end of June 2008, a total of 1 263 749 cows were examined and 28 cases of the BSE were detected. Consequently, 4 022 cows in cohorts were killed and their carcasses were safely disposed of. The farmers whose herds had been affected were provided compensations for the losses suffered. The total of the compensations in this period reached CZK 198,413 thousand. Of these, 83.3% (CZK 164.9 million) were compensations for the value of the killed animals, 9.7% (CZK 19.2 million) for the related costs, i.e., killing, safe disposal of carcasses and the examination for the BSE, and 6.9% (CZK 13.5 million) for the losses due to non-materialised production. The average costs per 1 BSE-positive animal were CZK 7.08 million and the average costs per 1 cohort animal were CZK 49 331. In the rendering plant responsible for killing the infected and cohort animals and safely disposing of their carcasses, the total of 2 221 tons of raw material was processed between March 2003 and February 2008, and this cost CZK 9 315 thousand. The fact that there were only two cases of the BSE in 2007 and none in 2008 suggests a trend towards the disease eradication, which is in agreement with the situation in the other EU countries.