Social structure and veterinary epidemiology in Latin América / Estructura social y epidemiologica veterinaria en América Latina

RESUMO

The objective of veterinaty epidemiology is established as the definition, analysis and solution of specific animal-health profiles. In turn, those profiles are understood as the synthesis at a given time and place of the production and sanitary problems with the actions organized by society to resolve them. The reference framework is the economic, political and social structure in which the livestock activity is developed. Determined by the role played by the livestock activity in the development of Latin América from colonial times to the present, the structure of production assumes specific forms to livestock organization. These forms are conceived as the principal epidemiological categories pre-industrial beef cattle breeding, industrial forms of breeding and of fattening-finishing, industrial forms of milk production and peasant subfamily simple mercantile and associative forms. A methodology is proposed for the objetive characterization of these productions forms, based on indicators of productivity ,indirect indicators of the organization of the animal hered, and economic indicators, some of which are readily available from existing census information. A short epidemiological analysis attemps to outline the formal and ideological content of the various categories of epidemiology. Within an overall view of the concrete reality, these categories are not exclusive if they are taken as.