Explore the livestock economy behind the outbreak, then test what disease and control could mean for farms, businesses and regions.
County records as published; cases are not animal counts or a measure of infection probability.
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This file is a dated snapshot. The refresh collector is supplied with the source package; a scheduled live service has not been deployed. Publication requires reconciliation of conflicting source totals.
Explore the APHA map of suspected and confirmed cases and its livestock-density layers. The map is supplied directly by APHA through ArcGIS; its update cycle is separate from this Observatory’s dated analysis.
If your browser blocks the embedded view or it stays blank, use the full-screen link above. Loading the map connects to ArcGIS and its external services. Read the map’s own legend and dates; suspected and confirmed premises are distinct categories.
Disease losses measure damage. Control spending measures resources used to prevent or reduce it. Compensation is a transfer and does not automatically equal the loss. Modelled impacts depend on their assumptions.
No verified total for UK-wide 2026 BTV economic damage is included in this edition. We will add attributable estimates with their country, period, scope and method when verified, rather than infer monetary losses from reported premises.
Selected coverage, not every report. New sources may take time to appear. Source publication dates and event dates are shown separately where available; the “last checked” timestamp does not make an older story new.Notes on the decisions, evidence and economics behind bluetongue. New entries will be added as the work develops.
What would make this Observatory more useful to your farm, business or research? Share a question, practical experience or a topic for a future article.
Send Bouda a contribution ↗This opens your email application. Contributions are private emails, not public comments; no message is sent by the site. Publication of a contribution would require a separate editorial decision.
Start with official income and market benchmarks. Adjust the flock and BTV assumptions, then compare the costs of disease and intervention.
Scale by an explicitly selected animal population, or assess disruption to a business. Results are scenarios conditional on the entered exposure.
Run the monthly farm LP, repeated-policy DP and market-welfare model in the dedicated BTV Model Lab. Compare without BTV, BTV, and BTV with intervention, with transparent assumptions and downloadable results.
The models examine farm resource allocation, sequential public-policy decisions and market welfare. Research by Stott, Vosough Ahmadi, Barratt and colleagues informs their methodological foundations; full citations and adaptation details are provided in the Model Lab. Outputs depend on the stated assumptions and are not measured outbreak losses.
Open the BTV Model Lab ↗146 decision variables: sheep, cattle, six feeds and twelve months. Compare farm contribution, feed requirements, binding resources and the cost of keeping the original herd.
Run the farm optimiser150 exposure and protection states, repeated quarterly decisions, farm responses, public budgets and policy sensitivity.
Run policy comparisonsSheepmeat, beef and milk equilibria, trade adjustment, infected and uninfected producers, consumers and government.
Run market scenariosOriginal source lineage, economic equations, benchmark dates, assumptions and what the models do not measure.
Read the methods| Evidence | Period / use | Primary source |
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Nation-level sheep populations use June 2025 for a common comparison year; Wales and Scotland are rounded published totals. England’s newer June 2026 sheep count is provided separately. Holding counts use rounded AUK 2025 figures, with differing national definitions; they include non-livestock holdings and do not sum exactly because of rounding. England's cattle layer remains unavailable pending exact source extraction. NI district farm, sheep and cattle data are June 2025 observations.
National farm income defaults cover all four nations, using 2024/25 accounts; NI uses DAERA’s August 2026 publication. Annual 2025 sheep prices are GB £7.10/kg and NI £6.55/kg, with carcase weights of 21kg (UK clean lambs) and 22.6kg (NI sheep). These different populations are explicit proxies for sale value, not replacement-ewe values. No farm-accountancy source supplies disease risk, vaccine efficacy or a farm's own costs.
Expected disease loss = animals × infection probability × [mortality × animal value + (1−mortality) × survivor production loss + treatment cost]. Avoided loss = disease loss × coverage × loss reduction × timely protection. Control cost = animals × coverage × complete-course cost + fixed cost. Net benefit = avoided loss − cost; BCR = avoided loss / cost. A zero cost gives an undefined ratio. One season, GBP, no discounting. Charts compare incremental costs against a hypothetical disease-free reference, not a reconstructed historical farm profit.
The sensitivity heatmap varies infection probability and loss reduction; it is not a probability distribution or confidence interval. Population scenarios assume homogeneous within-area parameters. Reported premises counts are never divided by total holdings and treated as animal infection risks. Clinical case-definition changes and inconsistent county totals prevent reliable incidence charts until reconciled.
Boundary data by Martin Chorley / UK-GeoJSON, CC BY 4.0. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2014. Geographic coordinates simplified for display. Historical district names are crosswalked explicitly for the NI statistical join. GB subnational livestock joins and private farm locations are not included.
The source includes a candidate snapshot collector and proposed scheduled workflow. It is not running as a live service. Source conflicts must be reviewed before a new snapshot is promoted. All calculations run locally in this page; no farm input is sent to Syntera.
Dated analyses with reproducible scenarios, source references and downloadable results. Each edition states its evidence date, assumptions and research status. Surveillance updates do not automatically recalibrate published analyses.
Recorded cases across the four UK nations, followed by farm LP, policy DP and market welfare scenarios. Seven figures, results tables, sensitivity analysis, conclusions and recommendations.
Exploratory economic analysis, not peer reviewed. Scenario outputs are not estimates of actual 2026 UK losses.
For a question about the research, a farm or business assessment, policy appraisal, or research collaboration.
Veterinarian & agricultural economist
Farm and enterprise modelling, cost–benefit analysis, disease-control economics and market impacts.
About Bouda ↗Enquiries are private correspondence, not public comments. Use the official veterinary reporting channels for suspected disease.