A Review of Economic Evaluations of Government Policies for the Control of Cattle Tick

The common cattle tick has been a problem to Australian cattle producers since its arrival from Java since 1872. Over the past thirty years, a considerable research agenda on optimum cattle tick management strategies for individual producers has been conducted. However only a limited focus has been placed on evaluating the effectiveness of Government policies towards the cattle tick. This is despite successive expensive eradication and control policies in New South Wales and a major regulatory framework in Queensland. This paper reviews the major economic evaluations of Australian Government policy towards the cattle tick, focusing on the use of the Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) technique. The paper also examines the evaluation of Government policy towards the tick overseas, especially the CBA of the United States sponsored tick eradication campaign in Puerto Rico. The paper concludes that aside from the CBA conducted in New South Wales for the Cattle Tick Review Committee (1980), the evaluation of public policy towards tick control has not provided decision-makers with thorough investigations of the economic effects of alternative tick control/eradication options. The lack of a comprehensive CBA into alternative tick control policy options is especially a concern in Queensland, where the same policy has remained basically unaltered, since the early 1900s.