REGULAR ARTICLES Neospora caninum causes severe economic losses in cattle in the humid pampa region of Argentina Dadin Moore & Michael Reichel & Ernesto Spath & Carlos Campero Accepted: 8 January 2013 / Published online: 17 January 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract This work estimates the economic losses due to Neospora abortions in the humid pampa region of Argen- tina. The total dairy and beef cattle population at risk of abortion is 1,771,326 and 9,726,684 head, respectively. In dairy cattle, there was an 8 % risk of experiencing abortion due to a variety of causes, but 16.5 % of them were due to Neospora caninum. The economic losses were estimated at US$1,865 (range, 1,400–2,331) per abortion, which equates to a total loss of US$43,607,430 (range, 15,622,600– 194,412,390) for the dairy industry at the humid pampa region of Argentina. In beef cattle, the overall risk of abor- tion was estimated to be 4.5 % for all pregnancies, whereas 6.7 % are specifically due to N. caninum, with an economic loss of US$440 (range, 150–730) per abortion. This amounts to an annual loss to the beef industry of US $12,903,440 (range, 1,130,700–42,070,630) in the same area. The results of this study show that Neospora infections and thus abortions cause severe economic impacts in the dairy and beef industries in the humid pampa region of Argentina, which is one the most important areas of cattle production in the world. Keywords Neospora caninum . Cattle . Economic losses . Argentina Introduction Neosporosis, an abortigenic disease of cattle caused by the protozoan Neospora caninum, is one of the most important causes of reproductive failure worldwide. In Argentina, the disease was first identified by detection of specific anti- bodies in aborted cows (Venturini et al. 1995). Its presence was later confirmed by immunohistochemistry in aborted bovine fetuses belonging to a dairy farm where an outbreak of abortions was recorded (Campero et al. 1998). Transpla- cental transmission of N. caninum was demonstrated be- cause specific antibodies were found in 20.2 % of 104 bovine fetuses from slaughterhouses (Venturini et al. 1999). A cross-sectional study carried out on 5,594 dairy and beef heifers and cows showed that animals with a history of abortion were 85 % more likely to be positive to N. caninum than animals without a record of abortion. Also, dairy cattle had increased odds ratio of being N. caninum positive. Replacement dairy heifers were 76 % more likely to be N. caninum positive than beef cows (Moore et al. 2009). Moreover, records of abortions due to N. caninum in beef cattle are also available in the central region on the country named humid pampa (Moore et al. 2003). The cattle industry has socioeconomic importance in Argentina. The country has 48 million head of cattle being 3.3 million dairy and 44.9 million beef cattle (Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería y Pesca de la Nación (MAGyP) 2010). There were 10,100 dairy farms producing 11,600 millionL of fluid milk in 2010 (MAGyP 2010). The Argen- tinean population consumes 43 L and 33 kg of fluid milk and dairy products, respectively, per capita per year. Total exported products reach 307,133 metric tonnes giving an income of US$756 million. Regarding the beef industry, 40 % of 224,448 producers have less than 100 head of cattle, and 1.3 % have over 2,000 head. The average consumption of beef meat per capita was 60 kg between 2001 and 2010, and US$1,652,731,000 were earned from exporting D. Moore (*) Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), C1033AAJ, Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: pmoore@balcarce.inta.gov.ar M. Reichel School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, University of Adelaide, Roseworthy Campus, Roseworthy, SA 5371, Australia E. Spath : C. Campero Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA), 7620, Balcarce, Argentina Trop Anim Health Prod (2013) 45:1237–1241 DOI 10.1007/s11250-013-0353-z