Data quality assessment of pig movements in the Norwegian Livestock Register reveals challenges for outbreak preparedness

The competent authorities need accurate, complete, and timely data on livestock movements to control rapidly spreading diseases. Based on our assessment, we found that pig movement data in the Norwegian Livestock Register lacked sufficient quality to serve this purpose. Instead, we recommend that movement data are additionally obtained through traditional epidemiological methods during outbreaks, such as from primary records on farms. Reporting from slaughterhouses and farms in sow pools should be targeted for improving the completeness and timeliness of the register data. Finally, the measures presented here should be used to develop real-time monitoring of the data quality.