There is a specific type of grief that has no common name. It tends to live in silence on family farms where livestock disease has forced a cull, existing somewhere between financial ruin and personal failure. The animals have vanished. The barns have been sanitized. The documentation has been submitted. The farmer is still standing in the yard, unsure of what to do.
The psychological harm caused by a culling event goes far beyond what the economic impact reports ever capture, according to researchers who study agricultural mental health. Farmers, veterinarians, and industry workers encounter five different challenges during and after livestock depopulation events, according to a 2025 qualitative study led by Rebecca Purc-Stephenson at the University of Alberta: emotional distress, threats to identity, economic strain, mistrust of authorities, and difficulty adjusting to what comes next. That is an extensive and serious list. The fact that emotional distress comes first is noteworthy.
Outsiders seldom understand the complexity of the cull’s psychology. These aren’t merely animals used for commercial purposes. A poultry farmer in the Fraser Valley or a beef farmer in rural Ontario frequently understands the habits, temperament, and background of each animal. In many cases, they have built a livelihood around the health of these creatures over generations, managed births, and nursed sick ones through the night. The emotional reaction is more akin to grief than a business setback when government orders mandate the destruction of entire flocks or herds, sometimes including healthy animals as required by contiguous culling practices.
The foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK in 2001 provided research on the scale of that type of loss. Clinically significant levels of severe post-traumatic distress were observed in about half of Dutch dairy farmers whose animals were put down. For farmers in buffer zones, where there were severe restrictions but no culling took place, that number dropped to one in five.
Although it didn’t completely shield anyone, distance from the act itself was important. The 2007 equine influenza outbreak in Australia yielded its own data: 34% of horse owners surveyed reported high psychological distress, which is almost three times higher than the rate in the general population. Additionally, those whose primary source of income was derived from horse-related industries were more than twice as likely to fall into that category.
It can be challenging to distinguish between the emotional and financial costs. When a farmer witnesses the destruction of livestock valued at $200,000 in a single afternoon, they are not merely doing the math in their heads.
In accordance with government protocol, they are also witnessing years of breeding decisions and animal care disappear. One observer pointed out that farmers frequently internalize poor harvests and financial loss as personal failures, not as external events but as proof of incapacity. This internalization is risky, particularly in a field where mental health services are consistently underfunded and stigmatized.
The way authorities handle the management process itself is another complex issue. Farmers who have experienced significant culling events often express intense dissatisfaction with government agencies’ communication—or lack thereof. One of the five main issues identified by the University of Alberta study was mistrust of authorities.
This mistrust isn’t illogical; rather, it stems from experiences with ambiguous procedures, hurried decisions, and a general perception that those in charge of policy don’t truly know what it’s like to work on a farm. Farming communities in Australia experienced such severe distress during the Ovine Johne’s disease response that government quarantine and de-stocking policies were actually suspended—not reversed, but paused—because the human cost was becoming indisputable.
This also applies to veterinarians. On farms where they have worked for years or even decades, they are often the ones who carry out depopulation orders. Significant psychological burden was also found in veterinarians in a 2025 study on the effects of depopulation on mental health; this aspect of the issue is often missed when the focus is limited to farmers.
Looking at the research, it is evident that animal health, biosecurity logistics, and financial compensation are the main pillars of the current framework for responding to agricultural disease outbreaks. After the immediate crisis has been resolved, mental health is treated as an afterthought. However, the research indicates that the order is incorrect. The psychological harm often lasts months or years after the outbreak and starts before the first animal is killed.
It’s difficult to ignore the costs associated with continuing to view this as a secondary issue, both financially and emotionally. The farms that make it through a culling event are run by people who had to witness something they built being dismantled, frequently overnight, and frequently without proper notice or assistance. It’s important to follow the protocols correctly. Assisting those who perform them is also important.
