Henk Hogeveen’ s post is a very concise summary about what the animal health economics is about, I agree with his statements. I would just like to add a practical aspect to his points. In Hungary the farms can buy drugs from the distributors, retailers, as well, so smaller and smaller part of the food animal vets’ income stems from selling drugs to the farms. Amongst the large-scale holdings is a common practice now to issue calls for tender for drug procurement which often results in buying the cheapest medicines regardless their efficacy for the given problems. In most cases the person being responsible for compiling this tender has no any veterinary knowledge, just economic, management skills. However, if the drugs brought do not work properly, and the animal health problems are getting worse, thus, causing more economic losses, the vet will be the one who is responsible for this failure. In order to avoid this kind of problem the vets definitely need to be familiar with animal health economics so that they can communicate with, influence or even convince the farm managers, decision-makers about the drug procurement alternative seeming to be economically optimal.
László Ózsvári
Associate professor Animal Health Management
Henk Hogeveen’ s post is a
Tue, 05/14/2013 - 08:26 — László ÓzsváriHenk Hogeveen’ s post is a very concise summary about what the animal health economics is about, I agree with his statements. I would just like to add a practical aspect to his points. In Hungary the farms can buy drugs from the distributors, retailers, as well, so smaller and smaller part of the food animal vets’ income stems from selling drugs to the farms. Amongst the large-scale holdings is a common practice now to issue calls for tender for drug procurement which often results in buying the cheapest medicines regardless their efficacy for the given problems. In most cases the person being responsible for compiling this tender has no any veterinary knowledge, just economic, management skills. However, if the drugs brought do not work properly, and the animal health problems are getting worse, thus, causing more economic losses, the vet will be the one who is responsible for this failure. In order to avoid this kind of problem the vets definitely need to be familiar with animal health economics so that they can communicate with, influence or even convince the farm managers, decision-makers about the drug procurement alternative seeming to be economically optimal.
László Ózsvári
Associate professor Animal Health Management