Businesses Face Major Damages in the Event of a Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreak
"This is standard practice in cases of epidemics because the potential economic damages of a spread are very large. Individual countries will protect themselves," said agricultural economist Franz Sinabell from the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (Wifo) regarding the possible losses for domestic businesses in the event of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Austria.
Foot-and-mouth disease would drive prices up
For consumers, rising prices for meat and dairy products would be the result. "In the event of an outbreak, there would be a shortage of supply on the market and thus an increase in prices. Those producers not affected by the disease would clearly be at an advantage in such a case," said Sinabell. However, the expert does not believe that consumers would refrain from consuming milk and meat products in the event of an outbreak: "It is a disease that is not dangerous to humans. Therefore, consumers would most likely be less concerned." Sinabell recalled in this context the spread of the EHEC bacterium through contaminated sprouts in 2011, which also led to deaths in Europe. "The situation was completely different then. Consumers felt the fear of suffering harm themselves if they consumed vegetables. At that time, the vegetable market collapsed for half a year."
Economic damages in the event of the spread of foot-and-mouth disease are significant
Economically, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease would certainly be noticeable for domestic agricultural businesses. According to data from Statistics Austria, the production value of milk last year amounted to around 1.95 billion euros, and for beef, it was a good 950 million euros. In a serious case, no major slumps are to be expected here, but even with a decline of two or three percentage points, "these are really significant sums," said the expert. Due to the outbreak of the disease in Hungary and Slovakia, Austria will temporarily close 24 border crossings in Lower Austria and Burgenland on Saturday. No case has occurred in Austria since the outbreak in neighboring countries.
(APA/Red)
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