The Benefits of Costs of Biosecurity: Optimal Quarantine and Surveillance

1. The Benefits of Costs of Biosecurity: Optimal Quarantine and Surveillance Tom Kompas and R. Quentin Grafton Crawford School of Economics and Government Kevin Fox (UNSW) CERF Project/CERF Hub Presentation 20 May 2008 Acknowledgement: DEWHA

2. Motivation • Combined with border quarantine measures, local surveillance programs provide an essential protection against the incursion and spread of dangerous exotic diseases and pests. • However quarantine and surveillance programs also impose costs (border quarantine and surveillance expenditures), along with the costs of disease management and eradication. • Problem: find the optimal amount of border quarantine and surveillance activities (or expenditures) to protect plant and animal health, as well as the environment.

3. Research Design: Optimal Surveillance • Benefit: Surveillance ensures ‘early detection’, lowering economic and environmental losses and pest/disease management costs. • Tradeoff: The more early the detection the more expensive the surveillance measure. • Objective: minimize: • Economic losses (plant, animal, the environment) • Eradication and management costs of the pest/disease incursion • Surveillance expenditures (e.g. monitoring, the cost of setting and monitoring traps, etc.)

4. Pest/Disease Incursion and Spread

5. Surveillance Expenditure Function

6. Example: Papua Fruit Fly in Australia • PPF attacks fruit (e.g. apples) and in early stages is difficult to detect by inspection. • Largest risk of entry: via the Torres Strait Islands and at ports of entry. • Current surveillance grid: 1 trap for every 6,200 km2 , 1,878 traps in total, Exp = $1,380,000 (including the programs fixed costs). • 1995 outbreak in QLD: $43m in eradication and management costs over a 13 month period.

7. Optimal Surveillance Grid and Expenditures (PPF) Optimal: one trap per 2,000 km2 and E*(c) = $3m (AUS) Current: $1.38m: Current surveillance grid: 6,200 km2

8. Future CERF work • Apply to several Red Imported Fire Ants and Yellow Crazy Ants in Australia. • Measure and include the benefits of biodiversity. • Construct spatial models of pest and disease surveillance.