AI-based animal health and welfare inspection

The challenge

The Australian red meat and livestock industry contributes more than $72.5 billion to our economy where Australia is a world leader in animal health and welfare slaughter standards.

However, regulating animal health and welfare in the red-meat supply chain includes manual inspections which are laborious, prone to subjective opinions and human errors. Non-compliance with transport-fit standards results in slaughter rejections at the processing plant, increased stress or harm to the animal, reduced quality of the meat product, and industry reputational impact.

The results

This research is contributing to modernising Australia’s regulatory approach to reduce regulatory costs for processors and make better use of innovative technologies for robust, real-time, risk-based regulation to maintain and strengthen Australia’s global reputation as a provider of assured, high-quality meat and livestock.

Our response

This project is developing an automated and integrated prototype system for real-time livestock monitoring including alerts and reporting of animal health and welfare, which can be used by trained stock inspectors, livestock vets and meat processing companies.

Our data scientists and animal behaviourists have partnered with a commercial abattoir to develop a prototype system that employs advanced computer vision and deep learning to automate animal behaviour and health abnormality detection.

For more information

How AI is helping us understand animal behaviour

AI-based Animal Health and Welfare Inspection for Export Compliance

Contact the team