Financial Compensations for Losses Due to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in the Czech Republic in 2001-2007

Abstract

Based on Czech legislature, the farmers whose herds were affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) are reimbursed for the costs associated with disease diagnosis, killing the animals and safely disposing of their carcasses, decontamination of their premises, if necessary, and compensations for the value of the animals killed and for losses due to non-materialised production. Between 2001 and 2007, a total of 1,194,743 were examined for BSE, 27 BSEpositive cases were detected and, consequently, 3,997 animals were killed and destroyed. To reduce the negative economic impact on agricultural production, farmers were compensated for selected cost items by the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic from the state budget. The costs of examination for BSE, killing of animals and destroying their carcasses, and decontamination of farms were CZK 18.9 million (9.7%), compensations for the value of the animals killed amounted to almost CZK 164.0 million (83.3%) and compensations for nonmaterialised production reached almost CZK 13.6 million (6.9%). Together with some additional costs, the total of reimbursements during the period of 2001-2007 in the Czech Republic was almost CZK 197 million. These results are discussed in comparison to rather scarce data in the international literature which reports only the total costs associated with BSE occurrence and not individual cost items by which cattle and beef producers are burdened.

Direct Costs of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Control Measures in Germany

“…On average, 42 animals were culled in Germany per BSE case. Whilst this figure appears high, it is relatively low when compared to that for the Czech Republic, where 148 animals were culled per BSE case (Pospíšil et al., ). For 2002, the European beef sector had foreseen subsidies of about 76 million Euros for the compulsory slaughter of whole herds and cohorts, if a BSE case was detected in a herd (Switala and O′Sullivan, ).…”

“…For this reason, and because the disease is not curable, we did neither consider the economic damage caused by production losses or veterinary treatments, nor the costs to pay for restocking of herds (the latter was subsidised by the federal states: state aids N 248/2001, N 174/2001, N 193/2001, N 150/B/2001, N 249/2001 and N 170/2001). In the Czech Republic, compensation payments for non‐materialized production reached almost 555 000 Euros (Pospíšil et al., ). Concerning the time spent on epidemiological investigations on the affected farms, we believe that it is appropriate to apply relatively high values in the first years, given that there was no experience with BSE and that it was reasonable to expect improving efficiency of data collection with time.…”

The evolutionary trajectory of social enterprises in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

“…Furthermore, the unwillingness of the public sector to cede control of public service delivery is by no means limited to the Czech Republic. Pospíšil and Hyánek (2009) note that this might be a general "post-communist" pattern of public service delivery. For nonprofit organisations, this pattern primarily means a lack of autonomy from the public sector (Vacekova et al, 2017).…”