Syndromic surveillance is a recent concept in epidemiology. Based on automated monitoringof non-specific health indicators, this new approach offers interesting prospects for the detection of various health events. We analyzed data on cattle mortality routinely collected inFrance to assess the feasibility and relevance of a syndromic surveillance system based on this indicator. We modeled the baseline of cattle mortality in France and proposed methods to identify and quantify excess mortality. First we analyzed real data to retrospectively estimate the effects on mortality of the bluetongue outbreak which affected the French cattle in 2007 and 2008. We then proposed a method to detect unusual increases mortality, and evaluated its performance for the detection of outbreaks of an infectious disease of which we simulated the spread in the cattle population. We finally discuss the interest of a surveillance system based on non-specific mortality for the protection of animal health, and make proposals for the operational implementation of such a system.
