Optimal design of culling compensation policy under the African swine fever — Based on simulations of typical pig farms in China

This paper aims to optimize the culling compensation policy from a micro perspective through scenario simulation. Based on an investigation of 273 pig farms in eight regions, four typical pig farms were constructed according to farm size and breeding mode, representing the swine producers in China. Besides, a decision objective function of pig farms facing suspected African swine fever (ASF) outbreaks was constructed. This study used a mathematical programming model to design and simulate scenarios based on compensation standards and local implementation levels, aiming to incentivize pig farms to report epidemics. The results show that the optimal decisions on epidemic reports differed among typical farms and by herd daily age. The results suggest the following adjustments for optimizing culling compensation policies: (1) to set culling compensation standards based on the market value and (2) to maintain a high level of epidemic surveillance capability in the animal husbandry and veterinary sector.