Improving animal monitoring Stress, disease, food contamination, reproduction failure, housing afflictions, environmental impacts and even human handling can severely affect animals, and hence, food quality. A minute telemetric device, injected into the animal and providing a unique electronic ID tag for the animal now offers a means by which to minimise these influences before they become critical factors. Health © Photodisc There are currently very few means by which to effectively monitor animal conditions throughout their lifespan that are not highly expensive and time consuming. While strict health monitoring processes are standard features in any animal farm, they cannot determine the animals' condition indefinitely and therefore make analysis difficult at critical junctures, such as the outbreak of BSE that affected European meat markets so critically. Now, designed and developed by a Belgian scientific laboratory in collaboration with other partners, a minute device that promises to have a wide ranging positive effect, not only in animal farms, but in market product quality and competitiveness, is currently available for venture. This telemetric device can be injected into an animal and offers a broad scope of features. It has a read-write facility according to current ISO standards, which means that the data it collects can be stored by communicating to a computer as well as allowing for programmed information to alter its specific performance parameters. By storing the recorded data in a database that can be animal-specific, the technology offers a case history of the animals health and welfare, a possibility for every animal on the farm. The technology has already been laboratory tested on pigs but may be broadened to incorporate a variety of other animals. Joint venture agreements are currently sought.
