Smart technology to improve animal welfare

As Director Corporate Quality at the VanDrie Group, Ruth Bouwstra is ultimately responsible for animal health and welfare in the entire chain. Although all meat companies of the VanDrie Group make use of camera surveillance, the ambition of the company was to improve this further.

Posted on Dec 22 ,04:58

In 2021, Bouwstra launched a project aimed at using smart camera monitoring in the reception area of the slaughterhouse. Ekro in Apeldoorn was used as pilot company. According to Bouwstra, the project offers guidelines for the further improvement of animal welfare.   

"Animal welfare is extremely important”, says Bouwstra. "If you can make it clear where you can demonstrably improve welfare, you have a win-win situation. Because if an animal feels good, that is better for everyone. It is therefore important that you organise this as well as possible."   

Bouwstra launched the Artificial Intelligence (AI) project together with Deloitte – which had already gained experience in this with another meat processor. "When new cameras with a higher resolution were placed at Ekro, we seized that moment. We conducted research first, because we wanted to know whether we could shed light on the interaction between human and animal by using camera monitoring. With our partner Deloitte, we subsequently developed computer models that are applicable to calves and their behaviour. Can the system start noticing that there too many animals in a space? Or that there is unnecessary physical contact between human and animal? We tested and validated this for a few days: is what the computer sees true and reliable? And is it feasible to improve it in practice?"

In addition to registration of the processes, cameras reveal causes of certain behaviour. In this way, you can see what the consequences are, for example, if the loading of animals is hurried or what happens if the rearmost animal is urged to walk while the animal does not have room to do that. "That provides us with new insights and in this way we can give our people feedback on their performance. We are also focusing on the animal-friendly behaviour that we would like to see."  

"As a result of the AI project, we have achieved major progress, and we have been able to demonstrably improve content and process", says Bouwstra. “Personally, I think that is more important than 'that the VanDrie Group does something with camera surveillance."

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