09 Apr 2019 --- A new research initiative is offering US$4 million in funding for research into the development and commercialization of automated monitoring tools that quantitatively assess key animal welfare indicators in broiler chickens. The SMART Broiler Initiative harnesses technology to improve poultry welfare assessments and is endorsed by the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (FFAR) and the McDonald’s Corporation. Testing these tools with such a food giant as McDonald’s has the potential to make considerable impact industry-wide.

The partnership comes amid trends across all food sectors, including the foodservice space and fast food arena, to strengthen animal welfare issues and create greater transparency. It will seek to support the development of the hardware components, data management and analytics necessary to assess broiler chicken welfare on the farm.

The collaboration also closely follows a World Animal Protection (WAP) report which slammed some of the world’s largest fast food chains, including McDonald’s, for their treatment of chickens. In January, the report, entitled “The Pecking Order,” rated eight companies (McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway, Nando’s, Starbucks and Domino’s) as either “poor” or “failing” on animal welfare standards. However, in response, the companies hit back insisting that their animal welfare standards are up to scratch.

McDonald’s stressed that its committed to taking a holistic, outcomes-based approach to chicken sustainability and has been working on this for more than a decade, together with suppliers, NGOs, academics and industry experts. “Our animal welfare commitments come on top of our global commitments on the responsible use of antibiotics and on eliminating deforestation from our supply chains by sourcing our chicken feed responsibly,” McDonald’s stated at the time.

Consumers are demanding to know more about their food and beverages; they want detailed information about sourcing, sustainability and exactly wher their food comes from with an emphasis on its environmental impact and ethics.

Existing methods for assessing animal welfare rely on human observation and subjective scoring. However, the FFAR-McDonald’s initiative aims to identify technology solutions to provide objective and comprehensive information about broiler welfare across the supply chain.

“Developing monitoring tools is critical to understanding and improving animal welfare across the broiler industry,” says FFAR Executive Director Sally Rockey. “The SMART Broiler program will not only improve the accuracy of welfare assessments but also enhance producer efficiency and profitability.”

The SMART Broiler program is to develop tools to quantitatively assess and collect information regarding key welfare indicators such as walking ability and behavior. The Sensors, Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technologies (SMART) developed during this initiative will be tested in McDonald’s suppliers’ commercial broiler facilities, encouraging their adoption on a wide scale.

These tools have the potential to improve welfare for nine billion birds annually in the US and over 20 billion worldwide, FFAR notes.

“This work builds on our decades-long commitment and progress on animal welfare. We partnered with FFAR to identify innovative, scalable technology solutions that will allow our supply chain to monitor animals’ behavior and welfare across diverse, global supply chains at commercial scale and ultimately help drive improved welfare outcomes,” adds Keith Kenny, Vice President of Global Sustainability, McDonald’s.

SMART Broiler grants will be awarded in two phases to multiple, cross-disciplinary teams.

The initial funding phase will award a maximum of four grants, each receiving up to US$500,000. SMART Broiler phase I is currently accepting pre-proposals until June 5, 2019.

During the second research phase, the most promising awardees will receive up to US$1,000,000 in additional funding to continue to refine and validate their technologies. The end goal of the program is to develop commercially-feasible tools that can be deployed worldwide.

By Gaynor Selby