**8. Social and economic implications of health management of farm animals**

The goal of livestock management is to ensure the efficient production of animals and animal products for social and economic gains at all strata of the human social system. Achieving this goal implies that farm animals must be kept healthy at all times for enhanced productivity. An important way to maintaining good health of farm animals is by eradication of epidemiological diseases or reduce their debilitating effects to barest level through combination of hygiene practices, biosecurity and vaccination of animals as failure in this regard may lead to immediate loss of livelihood to those in the livestock sector, disruption of domestic trade or the cessation of access to international markets, and threats to public health [1, 8, 10, 83]. Hence, the need for mitigation of the impact of diseases of farm animals. Prevention and control of animal diseases not only prevent the loss of animals to death but largely reduce the burden of the debilitating effects of disease and associated suffering of the animals such that they can enjoy better health and welfare. In addition, consumers could then have a supply of safe and affordable food [85]. In the same vein, vaccination of farm animals greatly protect animal and public health, reduce animal suffering, enable efficient production of food of animal source to feed the burgeoning human population, and greatly reduce the need for antibiotics to treat food and companion animals [90]. This, however, requires responsible use of vaccines and antibiotics to prevent, not just to control a disease outbreak in the farm animals but to ensure the safety of products from vaccinated or treated animals for safe consumption by humans. Control and prevention of diseases are however with cost implications whereby vaccination and treatment of animals add to cost the cost of livestock production and to the national veterinary budget [85]. This notwithstanding, advantages of boosting farm animals' immunity through vaccination and recovery of animals from ill-health by treatment worth the efforts and cost than losing the entire stock by death as the regained productivity of the farm animals could help recover the expended cost on vaccination and treatment in the long run.

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**Author details**

Okanlade Adesokan Lawal-Adebowale

of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*Address all correspondence to: deoaks@gmail.com

Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Federal University

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Farm Animals' Health Behaviours: An Essential Communicative Signal for Farmers' Veterinary…*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89738*

*Farm Animals' Health Behaviours: An Essential Communicative Signal for Farmers' Veterinary… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89738*
