UCD Biometrics and Food Chain e-Tracking Group
AVIAN BIOTRACK
BACKGROUND
Enhanced traceability of the poultry meat chain using Biometrics and E-Tracking technology. Feed contamination, disease outbreaks such as Avian Influenza and International trade, pose significant threats to the poultry industry. The latter and downstream food processing industries need to be able to certify the provenance, transport, storage (viz. duration and temperature) and processing history of poultry and poultry products, a concept also known as "Traceability from farm-to-fork". In addition, the consumer needs assurances regarding the provenance and hence potential disease risks associated with poultry and poultry products. It is thus incumbent on the industry and regulatory authorities to put tamper-proof auditable chain traceability systems in place.
Unlike larger animals (e.g. cows & sheep), there is no tamper-proof system in place currently that tags each individual chicken, hence it is not possible to fully assure the origin of poultry presented to a processing plant. In the case of an outbreak of disease (e.g. foot-and-mouth disease, BSE, avian influenza, etc.), it is critical to rapidly trace back the origin, movements and contacts between animals*.
Avian Biotrack proposes to develop an integrated system that enables on-the-spot confirmation of the animal’s identity and an associated data management system that ensures tamper-proof flow of data along the chain from birth to slaughter and beyond**. This is a 3-year project led by University College Dublin and the collaborators include an SME (Biosystems Engineering Ltd), an imprinting specialist company (Codico Ltd), and the e-tracking Global Standards organisation (GS1).
This project is funded by the Irish Government under the FIRM program and the National Development Plan (2000-2006)
(Project code FS050 on www.relayresearch.ie).
*Geers, et al (1997) Electronic identification, Monitoring and Tracking of Animals. CAB International, Wallingford
**Eradus, M. and Jansen, M.B. (1999) Animal identification and monitoring. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 24:91-98
CONTACT:
Dr. Ger Corkery by email Tel. + 353 1 716 1833
Dr. Alexis Pacquit by email Tel. + 353 1 716 3530
Dr. Ursula Gonzales Barron by email Tel. + 353 1 716 5589
