2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
We obtained population and pig movement data from the Veterinary Service from 2017 to 2019 (www.guia.agrocalidad.gob.ec). The cadastral and movement data were registered by producers, accessing individual accounts in the official system. Producers required a registry of their farm, and their pigs identified by official ear tags applied when vaccinated against CSF. The categories of pigs were piglets <30 days, barrows and gilts of 31–250 days, and boars and sows >250 days. The system updates the categories of pigs on a daily basis, taking into account their birth date. The cadastral dataset contained the identification of the premise and owner, number and category of animals. The movement dataset contained the movement ID, date and hour of validity (certificates have a validity of 14 hours), number of animals grouped by age and sex categories, premise and farmer ID, type of premise and administrative location (province, canton and parish) of origin and destination.
The surveillance dataset contained the CSF outbreaks in the study period (n=134), outbreak ID, date of occurrence, owner identification, farm location, farm type and number of pigs. This information was recorded in a parallel system and database, separate from the cadastral and movements (www.sistemas.agrocalidad.gob.ec/sizse). Map layers were obtained from the Institute of Statistics and Census of Ecuador INEC (http://www.geoportaligm.gob.ec/).