Farmers do buy cattle avoiding risk - simulation modelling approach

What is it about?

Do farmers avoid buying cattle from farms which might be infected with bovine tuberculosis? Well, some may but some may not care. Using recorded movement data, we showed majority of farmers actually do avoid buying risky cattle.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

What we think and what we do are not necessarily the same. There are many reasons in the real world that prohibit our 'ideal' behaviour. For the first time, we believe, we showed that farmers in New Zealand actually avoid buying cattle from risky area. This is really important because it does emphasise that disease interventions do change human behaviour. We presented a framework that can easily incorporate such human behavioural feedback into a disease simulation model.