Livestock diseases can severely harm animal and human health, and have adverse economic impactson producer incomes, markets, trade, and consumers. This paper develops a common framework toimprove information on public actions and policies to manage outbreaks of livestock diseases acrosscountries. The main aim is to facilitate the assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of differentpolicy responses to disease outbreaks. A pilot database covering four livestock diseases (avianinfluenza, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, classical swine fever, and foot and mouth disease) innine countries (Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, andthe United Kingdom) was constructed. It combines three layers of data: epidemiological factors;

government control and compensation measures; and economic impacts of disease outbreaks. Policyresponses to outbreaks were reviewed based on the information generated from the data analysis.

The results show that government expenditures to destroy pathogens via slaughter and

compensation policy measures were very expensive, especially in the case of large or prolongedoutbreaks, and that measures compensating financial losses at the farm level generated the highestshare of government expenditures in the short run.