Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) incidence in cattle and buffaloes and its associated farm-level economic costs in endemic India

•Highest number of FMD affected villages and animal level incidence was in non-FMD-CP implemented Assam and Madhya Pradesh states, respectively and negligible incidence was in FMD-CP implemented Punjab state.•The crossbred and high productive animals was severely infected than local breeds and the sexwise and agewise comparison revealed higher incidence in females and adult animals.•In severe incidence scenario, milk loss ranged between USD 6.87–47.44, USD 18.42–125.88, USD 16.33–91.43, and USD 27.17–123.62; mortality loss ranged between USD 32.61–804.27, USD 30.76–577.7, USD 65.36–502.2,and USD 188.04–413.7; distress sale ranged between USD 3.22–188.63,USD 64.34–519.3, USD 214.47–341.8, and USD 209.11–450.3; opportunity cost of labour ranged between USD 5.49–54.29, USD 5.49–67.78; USD 7.95–31.37 and USD 9.83–72.38 in indigenous cattle, crossbred cattle, local and improved buffalo, respectively.•The projected farm-level economic loss due to FMD in cattle and buffaloes in India was USD 3159 million (INR 221,110 million), USD 270 million (INR 18,910 million) and USD 152 million (INR 10,610 million), respectively, with wide variation between the states.•The bi-annual vaccination need to be strictly implemented in the non-FMD-CP and also in the FMD-CP states to reduce the disease incidence. The study investigated the important epidemiological parameters and farm-level economic costs of FMD incidence in cattle and buffaloes during 2013−14 to 2015−16 in various states of India. Multistage random sampling procedure was adopted for the primary survey and data was collected through face-to-face personal interview from 18,609 cattle and buffalo rearing farm households from 123 districts across twelve states and one Union Territory. Besides epidemiological parameters, different farm-level direct and indirect loss associated with FMD was assessed at disaggregated level (states) by employing deterministic mathematical models. Highest number of affected villages and disease incidence was observed in non- FMD control programme (FMD-CP) implemented Madhya Pradesh and Assam states, respectively whereas negligible incidence was in FMD-CP implemented Punjab state. The disease incidence was high during 2013−14 and declined during 2014−15 and 2015−16, respectively implied severe incidence scenario (2013−14) succeeded by moderate (2014−15) and mild (2015−16) scenarios. The crossbred and high productive animals were severely affected than local breeds whereas on sexwise and agew