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Collaborative project: An automated method for the detection of certain death in industrial slaughter of pigs, Subproject 1
Project
Project code: 28RZ3IP031
Contract period: 22.01.2016
- 31.01.2018
Budget: 59,388 Euro
Purpose of research: Experimental development
In pig slaughter single animals might regain consciousness after stunning and bleeding but before scalding without being recognized by the staff responsible. This is legally and ethically unacceptable. Concerned pigs should be detected and killed immediately. The project aims to deveolop an automatic system for detecting signs of life before scalding. Visual and three dimensional data of the animal bodies moving toward scalding are used to assess signs of life by software analysis in realtime. In case personal will be alarmed and can take necessary measures to prevent suffering in the individual pig as well as optimize the process of stunning and bleeding. Grant support is neccessary to allow hard and software development and for scientific evaluation under routine conditions. Thus the project shall contribute to further improve welfare at slaughter. In the first stage the system will be assembled and the software developed. Then the system will be installed and operated half a year in one slaughter plant. Scientific supervision will be carried out comparing it to an existing prototype based on visual data analysis. In the next stage the system will be installed at two other slaughter plants and all three installations will be tested for another year. Meanwhile the system will be further improved with regard to easy installation and durability under slaughter house conditions. Finally a system ready to install 'out-of-the-box' will be brought to market by two of the consortium partners. The results of the scientific evaluation will help to further understand the phenomenon of returning signs of life before scalding and to optimise the process of stunning and bleeding at slaughter. Realtime management and processing of visual and three dimensional data is a key competence in the upcoming 'precision farming'. The techniques developed in this project will become useful for building future precison farming tools to monitor stock activity (i.e. panic detection in poultry) or animal behavior at transport (detecting 'downers').
Section overview
Subjects
- Agricultural Technology Animal Production
