Studies suggest that geographically concentrated and contact-intensive farming systems are more susceptible to large-scale disease epidemics than systems lacking these features (cf. Mangen et al., 2002; Stegeman et al., 2002; Mintiens et al., 2003; Raulo and Lyytikäinen, 2005). Classical swine fever (CSF) is a disease, which can have devastating impact on agriculture. It is listed by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE, 2006) as a disease which can spread rapidly, exhibit significant morbidity or mortality in pigs and be an issue due to international spread through live pigs and pig meat. In the event of a CSF outbreak in Finland, the measures set by European Union (EU) legislation are applied. CSF has not been reported in Finland since 1917. However, the introduction of an easily spreading animal disease into a country has several economic consequences. The goal of this paper was to study how large financial losses a CSF epidemic could cause to the pig sector, including Finnish pig producers, the meat processing industry and the government. Epidemiological data used in this study were based on epidemiological simulation data (Raulo and Lyytikäinen, 2005). Indirect economic losses were simulated by use of a sector model presented by Niemi et al. (2006). Direct loss due to disease eradication and losses to meat processing were calculated, and losses to farms were minimised. The novel aspect of the model is that it took into account how producers can minimize economic losses by adjusting production decisions according to the decrease in export demand and the size of disease outbreak after they have become observable. Pig production was able to adjust over time by controlling the number of piglets used to produce gilts. The model also took into account how severely the epidemic affected the number of pigs kept on farms and how the number of sows was forecast to affect the profitability of pig production. Altogether six ‘what if’-scenarios were examined: Two alternative epidemics of different sizes (medium- or large-sized) combined with three alternative export scenarios (10%, 50% or 100% decrease in export demand for pig meat). The hypothesis to be examined was that there would be major differences in economic losses between the scenarios for export reactions and for medium- and large-sized CSF epidemics in Finland. Options to utilise the model in the economic analysis of disease policy and the implications of production structures are discussed. Epidemiological evidence suggests that under the current spatially diversified structure of Finnish pig farming and related industries, the probability of a severe disease epidemic counting dozens of infected farms is small. Even for epidemics considered large in Finland (5–33 infected farms) combined with a major reduction in export demand, the median loss was simulated to be only 19.2 million. The majority of these losses were due to loss of exports corresponding almost 20% of pig meat production in Finland. While the current structure of pig farming in Finland incurs higher production costs than the most intensive structures in Europe, it also seems to decrease the probability of ‘catastrophic’ economic losses. The results suggest that the response of export markets and the number of uninfected farms affected by preventive measures are critical to the magnitude of losses, as they can amplify losses even if only few farms become infected.