Opinion and report of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) on the assessment of the impact of fox population dynamics on public health
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT The Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) can be hunted as a game species. It may also be listed as a “species likely to cause damage” (ESOD – the acronym in French), for public health reasons among others. Conversely, benefits linked to the presence of foxes are also put forward, such as the predation of rodents carrying zoonotic agents. In this context, ANSES was asked to: (1) list the zoonoses present in France for which foxes play an epidemiological role, (2) identify other public health impacts associated with changes in fox populations, (3) explain the relative importance of the effects of changes in fox populations for humans and/or the environment, (4) analyse the feasibility of a cost‐benefit analysis (CBA) of the prevention and impacts associated with these zoonoses. In France, the fox is a source of zoonotic pathogens, with a major role for Echinococcus multilocularis, a parasite for which the fox is the main source of environmental contamination. However, reducing fox populations does not reduce the risk of transmission of E. multilocularis to humans or domestic animals, and may even have the opposite effect to the one intended. The main levers for action are those relating to exposure to environmental contamination. The fox is part of complex trophic networks, in which its specific role in regulating prey populations is impossible to determine because (i) several predators share the same prey, with a variable role for the fox among the predators, (ii) the dynamics of prey populations is also conditioned by factors other than predation. The relationship between the abundance of rodents and the risk of disease for humans has not been demonstrated either, due to the complexity of the trophic and epidemiological networks, their highly probable variability from one ecosystem to another, and the multiplicity of hosts. As a result, the data currently available does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the epidemiological role of the fox as a predator of rodents hosting zoonotic agents. Finally, there is no public health justification for culling foxes, particularly for ESOD classification, except in the very specific and localised context of the fight against bovine tuberculosis, for which the selective culling of foxes in and around the livestock buildings of a domestic outbreak has been proposed. In addition, the expertise concluded to the feasibility of a CBA targeted at assessing the burden of alveolar echinococcosis and measures to prevent its transmission. The feasibility study shows the partial nature of a CBA targeting zoonoses, without taking into account other roles played by the fox in the ecosystem.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.018 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".