3.1 Descriptive analysis of pig movements in Ecuador
The Ecuadorian pig chain is organised into two production structures:
traditional producers (farms, traders, and markets) and industrial
producers (industrial). Premises are classified as farms: traditional
producers, mainly backyards (subsistence); traders: individuals who
buy/sell animals on the same day and/or groups of animals for one or two
days, transporting and selling them to final destinations such as
abattoirs, markets and farms; industrials: industrial pork producing
companies; markets: licenced facilities where live pig are marketed
(Ecuador’s Official Record, 2016). Live animal markets represent
vestiges of indigenous tradition, marketing and culture, acting mainly
in the highland Andean region (Benitez and Sanchez, 2001).
The dataset contained 9,904,714 pigs involved in 1,190,991 movements,
geographically distributed in 945 (92%) of the 1,032 Ecuadorian
parishes. The movement dataset contained domestic movements and included
721 imported animals from Chile, Canada and the United States (for
breeding purposes from industrial farms). The number of movements
analysed averaged 396,997 per year. In the study period, there was an
increase in the number of movements, pigs and premises of 53.23%,
32.38% and 51.32%, respectively. Considering the categories of
premises, there was an increase of 53% farms, 46% traders, 4%
abattoirs, 8% industrial markets, and 15% markets. Pig producers used
their individual web accounts to issue 94.72% of the movement
certificates in the study period, compared to 9.43% in 2015.
The annual average proportion between premises types was from farms to
markets (26.66%), followed by farms to abattoirs (23.33%). The less
frequent were from industrial to markets (0.17%) and between markets
(0.28%). Markets as origins or destinations accounted for 55.37% of
the movements (Table 2). Only 5% of the premises had geographical
coordinates, using instead the centroid of their parish, the median
distance of the movements was 11 km. The number of movements for each
study year is available in SI1.
Table 2. Average number of movements and animals by origin, destination
and distance grouped by type of premises in Ecuador (2017-2019).