CONCLUSION

In this study, we identified 24 pathways for the farm-to-farm transmission of porcine infectious diseases, including the direct way through animal transport and indirect modes by people, vehicles, and other fomites. The high relevance of many of these pathways highlights that neglecting them during outbreak investigations or disease modelling, research may have substantial repercussions, especially following the introduction of pathogens that are easily transmitted via fomites and aerosols. Our disease-specific risk classification of these pathways brings a valuable contribution to comprehensive surveillance and control strategies. While the simple scaling system we adopted does not result in exact parameter estimates applicable to disease transmission simulation models, it allows estimating parameters for given pathways, relative to those already known in the literature. In addition, the parallel exploration of farmers’ practices, attitudes and perceptions towards potential disease pathways performed in our study, make it possible to relate the findings to the target community for disease surveillance and control.