Defense of Manon Roustit's thesis

Members of the jury:

• Reviewers before defense:
  • Barbara HAESLER, Professor, Royal Veterinary College
  • Katharina STAERK, Head of Science Department, Bundesamt für Lebensmittelsicherheit und Veterinärwesen

• President :
  • A préciser après la soutenance
• Examiners:
  • Barbara HAESLER, Professor, Royal Veterinary College
  • Katharina STAERK, Head of Science Department, Bundesamt für Lebensmittelsicherheit und Veterinärwesen
  • Aurélien MADOUASSE, Professor, Oniris VetAgroBio, Nantes, France
  • Didier RABOISSON, Professor, École Vétérinaire de Toulouse, France
• PhD Director:
  • Pauline EZANNO, Research director, INRAE, Nantes, France
• PhD co-director:
  • Arnaud RAULT, Research fellow, INRAE, Nantes, France

Abstract:

The large number of factors involved in farmers' decision making and scare resources available to implement change present a major challenge for the design of effective public policies, in particular with regard to on farm antimicrobial use. Using the complexities of the French beef suckling industry as illustration, this thesis explores how finding the balance between prevention and cure can help tackle some of livestock farming most important negative externalities.

To this end, this work proposes an integrative framework aiming to connect determinants identified across economic and social-psychological studies, highlighting how any disease specific measure finds itself part of a wider network of influences essential to its adoption.

In a second part, this thesis examines the effects of a certified, voluntary vaccination programme on BRDs vaccination strategies at farm level. This study demonstrates specific features of voluntary vaccination programmes, notably their endogenous cyclical dynamics, resulting from the combined effect of diminishing marginal returns when disease prevalence falls, and buyer-side free riding when herd immunity is high.

In its final part, this work proposes a proof-of-concept study for a novel bio-economic model, aiming to capture the interactions of economic-epidemiologic feedbacks overtime and assess how they shape behaviours at farm level, thus seeking to answer a final question: can targeted economic incentives yield measurable  epidemiologic effects? This type of model could provide policy-makers with a powerful tool to design future animal health management policies

Keywords:

Animal health, strategic decisions, public policies, AMR, Vaccination