Evaluation der Bedeutung der Kontrolle staatlicher Politikmaßnahmen zur Sicherung der Tiergesundheit

summary Evaluating the Role of Surveillance in National Policies for Animal Health Surveillance is an increasingly important component of policies aimed at mitigating the effects of animal disease, and as a focus for evaluation of its economic worth. This article results from a project commissioned by the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office to develop a practical, generic tool for the economic evaluation of animal disease surveillance programmes. The first task was to define surveillance, and to consider its role in relation to intervention, the other component of mitigation. Surveillance cannot be properly evaluated without reference to intervention, because it guides the nature and scope of intervention resource use. In economic terms, surveillance and intervention are usually substitutes, though the relationship between them varies according to the stage of mitigation. Mitigation objectives are commonly presented in terms of a reduction in disease prevalence or incidence, both technical measures of disease occurrence, but it is the value of losses avoided relative to the costs of surveillance and intervention that matters for animal health policy. Though cost‐effectiveness and cost–benefit analyses are the main economic evaluation techniques currently used, the research agenda to underpin animal health policy should extend to estimation of disease‐specific technical relationships between losses avoided, surveillance, and intervention, founded on close integration of economics and veterinary epidemiology.