The economics of parasite control: obstacles to creating reliable models

Abstract

Models of the population biology and transmission of helminth parasites of domestic ruminants do not generally include any explicit reference to production because that would require the identification of a systematic relationship between parasitism and production loss. This is difficult because (1) the relationship between parasitism and production loss (in so far as we can identify one) is non-linear, (2) it is by no means clear which index of parasitism we should use in defining the nature of the relationship and (3) time delays in the system and the multicausal nature of production losses make it difficult to tease out those components of the loss that are attributable to parasitism.