Estimation of swine movement network at farm level in the US from the Census of Agriculture data

Abstract

Swine movement networks among farms/operations are an important source of information to understand and prevent the spread of diseases, nearly nonexistent in the United States. An understanding of the movement networks can help the policymakers in planning effective disease control measures. The objectives of this work are: (1) estimate swine movement probabilities at the county level from comprehensive anonymous inventory and sales data published by the United States Department of Agriculture - National Agriculture Statistics Service database, (2) develop a network based on those estimated probabilities, and (3) analyze that network using network science metrics. First, we use a probabilistic approach based on the maximum information entropy method to estimate the movement probabilities among different swine populations. Then, we create a swine movement network using the estimated probabilities for the counties of the central agricultural district of Iowa. The analysis of this network has found evidence of the small-world phenomenon. Our study suggests that the US swine industry may be vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks because of the small-world structure of its movement network. Our system is easily adaptable to estimate movement networks for other sets of data, farm animal production systems, and geographic regions.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus dissemination across pig production systems in the United States

“…Between-farm animal movement has historically been associated with disease spread (Augusta, Taylor, & Deardon, 2019;Machado et al, 2020;Moon, Ferdousi, Self, & Scoglio, 2019). Here, we used structured coalescent models to infer migration rates among commercially unrelated pig farms, calculating PRRSV dissemination not related to between-farm pig movement.…”

The Application of an Augmented Gravity Model to Measure the Effects of a Regionalization of Potential Risk Distribution of the US Cull Sow Market

“…The recent global outbreak of ASF was first identified in Georgia in 2009, spreading across Europe and eventually China by August 2018 [ 18 ]. To combat this, the USDA released the “Disease Response Strategy African Swine Fever” in the spring of 2019 [ 19 ] to serve as strategic guidance in the event of an ASF outbreak. One of the critical pillars of response is the control and subsequent eradication of the disease.…”

“…As stated in the report, “ Quarantine and movement control measures are fundamental to any ASF response effort ” [ 19 ]. While a nationwide standstill on animal movements will ensure no disease transmission results, the effects of regionalized standstill orders are poorly understood.…”

Generation of swine movement network and analysis of efficient mitigation strategies for African swine fever virus

“…In another work by Valdes-Donoso et al, machine learning techniques were used to predict movement networks in the State of Minnesota [2]. A recent work uses a maximum information entropy approach to estimate movement probabilities among swine farms [3] and suggests that the 'small-world phenomenon' could make the US swine industry vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks. Despite several efforts, pig level networks in the US swine industry are not readily available for simulating disease outbreaks.…”