When Sick Cows Can't Be Culled
From the article it appears that some of the reluctance to vaccinate arises from the potential for loss of income due to temporarily decreased milk production. This lasts for a period of weeks. The other sticking point may be the potential for income loss due to vaccine-caused late-term abortions.<p>Perhaps it would be useful for the Indian government to educate the farmers about the benefits of vaccination via a mobile phone ad-based campaign. Emphasize that vaccination only needs to be done once for each animal and they are protected for life.<p>In addition, to manage the reluctance of individual farmers to vaccinate based on potential income loss, offer a temporary financial subsidy based on the local price of milk that would be sold. This might require some knowledge about how milk production is typically affected so that adequate payment schedules can be calculated based on strong data about production declines and their usual durations.<p>Since the vaccine can cause late-term abortions which also affect the financial viability of the farmer&#x27;s operations a subsidy can be created to compensate for that loss and could take the form of a one-time payment of the projected value of a calf that would be made to a farmer who can demonstrate a loss post-vaccination. This would encourage farmers to maintain a relationship with local veterinarians at the same time since the veterinarian would verify the loss. As a result, herd health in the country could improve significantly in a few years.<p>All of this should end up being a temporary program since you will eventually run out of cattle to subsidize when you reach the point where all calves are vaccinated at birth. Preventing this from birth eliminates the need for the milk subsidy and for the abortion subsidy so if you can get strong buy-in from the cattle owners it may be possible to eliminate this problem quickly.<p>Vaccination efforts should focus first on heifers since they are the ones suffering the abortions and the decrease in milk production. The secondary focus should be on new-born calves of both sexes. The tertiary focus should be on bulls.<p>By focusing on heifers up front, your program costs should scale back to regular vaccination administration and animal tracking to insure that most cattle are protected.<p>I own no cattle myself, I am a geophysicist, but I grew up in rural Texas and have worked a lot of cows, docked and castrated sheep, raised chickens for eggs, and some family members currently raise cattle. I don&#x27;t see the inability to cull as a huge hurdle since this looks like a solvable problem. Obviously if you could just cull the sick cattle from the herd then the problem is eliminated more quickly but in the absence of that option go with the tools you have available. It may take longer but with appropriate buy-in from the cattle raisers after a comprehensive education campaign you can end this in a few years. Their target date is 2025 and that looks reasonable. Maybe they are already doing this. The article doesn&#x27;t say with certainty but it is obvious they are committing significant money to the effort. hopefully they can direct it to the right part of the problem.