Water Buffaloes In Pakistan:Wastewater Access;Disease Occurrence,and Milk Yield And Economic Losses

Global changes such as population growth,urbanization and industrialization,stress the environmental problems in our planet especially increasing volume of sewage and industrial wastes is becoming one of the emerging issues.Asia,especially Pakistan is facing water scarcity problem and per capita water availability has been reduced.Thus,ample the problem of water shortage,the wastewater uses as an alternative water for crops and animals rearing purpose.Livestock,have a major share in the economy of Pakistan and food and income source,force to bathing in the wastewater,causing heavy losses through increasing disease burden,hampering animal productivity and economic losses.However,most of the literature has only focused on the indirect effects of wastewater use on animal health or productivity,and literature on the direct effects of wastewater use is rare.Therefore,the main aim of the study is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of wastewater usage on the occurrence of animal diseases,productivity and economic losses in Pakistan.This study is based on cross-sectional data collected through field survey of 360 domestic water buffalo holders from 12 districts of Punjab Province,Pakistan.We tested the occurrence of the animal diseases,animal health,and wastewater-use preference with various econometrics tools,such as the Poisson,negative binomial,and logistic regressions.In addition,we quantified the milk yield losses due to animal diseases induced by wastewater bathing with respect to time and region.The impacts of animal diseases,wastewater use and some factors approach to reduce milk yield losses were also analyzed with double log regression model.Similarly,expenditure and production losses are estimated by using partial budget model.Moreover,we investigate the occurrence of animal diseases and associated impacts on economic losses using correlation analysis and propensity score matching(PSM)technique.The findings of the study show that the majority of the farmers use wastewater for buffalo bathing due to the shortage of freshwater resources.The higher prevalence of clinical mastitis is found followed by tick infestation and foot and mouth disease.Results explored the occurrence of diseases such as clinical mastitis,tick infestation,and foot and mouth disease at the farm level significantly associated with buffalo bathing in the wastewater.Moreover,bathing in wastewater pre-and post-milking also plays a role in the occurrence of diseases.Particularly,the clinical mastitis is highly stochastic with bathing into wastewater before and after milking.If the buffalo access to wastewater for bathing within 60 minutes after milking,the probability of the animals being exposed to mastitis is higher.Furthermore,on investigation,a number of factors are found,such as the distance to the water source,power shortage,groundwater availability,and the education of farmers that influence farmers’ behavior of letting their animals to take a bath in wastewater.On the other hand,higher milk yield losses are associated with foot and mouth diseases followed by clinical mastitis and tick infestation.Milk yield losses is positively correlated with disease occurrence caused by wastewater bathing.On investigation,we found that direct production losses such as milk productivity,premature culling and reduction in slaughter value are higher in the group of buffaloes having direct access to wastewater for bathing.Similarly,higher economic losses are estimated among those buffaloes who enjoying wastewater as a bathing source.The findings of the double-log model show that higher economic losses in buffaloes who access to wastewater for bathing within 30 minutes of after milking are perhaps due to high risk of bacterial penetration in teats ducts.Propensity score matching result shows around $155 overall monthly economic losses per animal,which are mainly due to animal access to wastewater for bathing.Thus,the higher disease burden,productivity and economics losses are associated with water buffaloes access to wastewater for bathing and grazing on pasture irrigated with contaminated water stresses a need to approach extension and farm advisory services to disseminate information to the farmers about the consequences of wastewater use for their animals.The study findings also reference the need for policies to find alternative ways to deal with the shortage of water and to restrict the farmers to use wastewater for animal bathing,drinking and irrigation purpose.