At farm level, the livestock keeper typically faces a limited set of disease constraints,
and it is often fairly obvious which one needs priority attention to improve productivity
and farm profits. As the point of decision-making moves up to the national and
international levels, the range of disease constraints broadens considerably, and priorities
become much more difficult to distinguish both in terms of the magnitude of the
problems they cause, as well as who stands to gain from efforts to relieve those
constraints. In the past, decisions at these higher levels about how to allocate scarce
public resources to address livestock health problems have often been based on
``intestinal emotion'' (the gut-feeling), common-sense reasoning, political pressures from
on high, or effective lobbying resulting in ``oiling of the squeaky wheel.'' With the
emergence of the management culture, there has been a trend towards developing
transparent, structured frameworks for assessing priorities upon which to base resource
allocation decisions. The stress is on transparency and accountability, whether it be for
the benefit of a national electorate at the country level, or for the benefit of donors in the
case of international organisations.