Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure
10.24.
Drip irrigation of tomatoes in Ecuador.
world wait until they see an obvious problem before treating it. This almost always
results in a more costly treatment than prevention.
Preventive treatments are designed to reduce disease losses in animals. Some pre-
ventive treatments are very inexpensive and easily adopted by small farmers. An
example is treatment for foot rot in sheep and goats. Some animals seem to be more
susceptible than others. When they are infected, they spread the infection to others
in the same flock. Effective prevention consists of trimming their hooves to remove
infected material, running them through a medicated dip, as in Figure 10.25, and
finally keeping their pens clean and dry.
Preventive vaccination has been extremely useful in the control of some diseases.
A vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease is available to prevent this viral disease. Other
animal diseases caused by bacteria that can be easily prevented by vaccines include
pneumonic pasteurellosis and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis in cattle.
Some preventive treatments have little direct benefit to the farmer but may have
significant benefits for the consumer. One example of vaccination benefiting consu-
mers is the reduction of salmonella-contaminated eggs in England. In 1996
government testing showed that one box in every 100 boxes of eggs had salmonella
contamination. After 8 years of voluntary producer vaccination of poultry against
salmonella, another survey in 2004 found only one box in every 290 boxes of eggs
