Table 5.

Alert categories and disease tendencies in swine health

Alert categories	MLF-index	Characteristics
Secure	aaa, aab, aac, abc, acc	Low virulence diseases and constant presence. With small outbreaks of considerable damage, constantly focused in a specific region, with good disease control and good biosecurity, their economic effect does not exceed the producer’s capacity.
Preventive	abb, baa, bab	Diseases with moderate virulence and wide dissemination, mainly with marketable outbreaks of medium to high morbidity with low losses, at the regional or national level. Its regular control and biosecurity have failed to eradicate some diseases. Its economic damage involves agricultural capacity, national policy, and market tools.
Alert	bbb, caa, cba	High virulence, emergent, and concomitant diseases. Outbreaks may begin in a specific area and reach a wider population by unexpectedly increasing the occurrence. Standard control and biosafety measures are not sufficient to contain the outbreak. Private insurers and the government can absorb economic damage.
Alarm	bcc, bcb, cbb, cca, ccb, ccc	Epizootics with high virulence and catastrophic impact. May induce infrequent outbreaks, of international scale. Commonly, these diseases exceed the control and biosecurity measures, causing alarm in the consumer and disruption in the markets. The government contributes to assistance policies for the economic and social significant effects, but these diseases conduce to large losses in the regional environment, seriously affecting small producers.

Categories and characteristics according to, and modified of, OCDE (2011, 2012); Thrusfield et al. (2018); and Hoinvile (2011)