4 Key Takeaways From Poultry Tech Summit 2023
The Poultry Tech Summit 2023 in Atlanta gathered industry leaders from across the country to discuss the current cutting edge of technology in the poultry industry. Over the course of two days, a host of academics, executives, and engineers gave their insights on where the industry is going, and how technology can help producers stay competitive. The following were Innovate Animal Ag’s key takeaways from the summit:
1) There's more data than ever, but generating business insights can be a challenge.
By the far the dominant theme of the conference was data, in particular how to use it once you have it. Cameras, recording devices, and other sensors are becoming more common in hatcheries, on farms, and in processing facilities. Combine this with the data generated by companies around genetic performance, feed prices, and bird performance, and there’s an ocean of data from which to extract insights. For example, Marcel Sarzen, CEO of AGL technologies discussed the potential of using AI to analyze audio recordings of the barn to detect equipment failures, the energy level of the flock, and to get early alerts of potential morbidity. William Herring, VP of Research and Development at Cobb Vantress described digital trait assessment facilitated by big data and AI as the “next frontier” of genetic improvement.
However, when it comes to multifactorial metrics like broiler slaughter weight, extracting business insights from this data can be challenging. Dr. Vernon Felts, Senior Director of Live Production at Butterball emphasized that producers have to be proactive with the data they have. Even when on-farm monitoring is completely automated, it’s still ultimately a human that has to look at this data, monitor alerts, and make decisions around what to do. Evan Sadlon, Data Science Manager at MTech Systems discussed a potential solution to this challenge by using ChatGPT to make it easier to analyze the massive amount of data generated by their poultry flock management software, via natural language queries.
2) The interface between the hatchery and the farm is evolving.
One of the most exciting talks at the summit was by Erik Hoeven, General Manager of Nestborn. With the motto of “Turning animal welfare into profit,” he discussed how hatching broilers directly on the farm, rather than at the hatchery as is traditionally done, can have a host of benefits across animal welfare and production efficiency. He drew attention to the recent study which showed that chicks hatched-on farm needed significantly fewer antibiotics, as a result of better intestinal development from gaining access to food and water right away, and being exposed to fewer pathogens at the hatchery and during transport. At the same time, two other companies presented automation equipment for sorting day-old broiler chicks by sex, which could also help producers by making each flock more uniform. Terrence O'Keefe, Content Director at WATT Global Media, noted in the closing remarks that these two directions are somewhat incompatible, and it will be interesting to see which direction the industry will lean. This, combined with the proliferation of in-ovo sexing for layers across Europe and soon across the globe, means that the interface between the hatchery and the farm is evolving for both broiler and layer producers. In-ovo sexing could even enable the use of on-farm hatching for layers, as it eliminates the need for manual sex sorting at the hatchery.
3) HPAI is here to stay.
In the keynote address, Gordon Butland, Director at G&S Agriconsultant Co., highlighted that disruption in the poultry industry was “A Tale of Two Viruses”: COVID and highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Many presenters discussed ways to increase biosecurity to minimize the impact of HPAI, such as by using sensors to triage issues and minimize workers going in and out of the barn.
In an expert panel entitled “Technology and the future of HPAI control,” panelists noted that, unlike the 2014-2015 outbreak, this current outbreak is not going away any time soon (indeed, cases seem to be picking up across North America). The reason is that the virus has evolved to infect a much wider range of bird species. Historically, waterfowl were the most important wild bird population to carry the virus, but more recently we’ve seen prevalence in more gull and shore bird populations. This underscores the importance of new technologies that can present long-term solutions to the challenges of HPAI, such as vaccines and gene-editing.
4) Automation is the key to lowering cage-free production costs.
In an expert panel entitled “Overcoming the cage-free challenge,” producers discussed the myriad challenges associated with the increase of cage-free production in the egg industry. On-farm automation was called out in particular as an important area of innovation. Cage-free production is significantly more labor-intensive than conventional production: Craig Rowles, General Manager of Cage-Free Production at Versova, noted that for conventional production, the ratio of birds to workers is around 300,000 to 1, but for cage-free production a single worker can only handle 120,000 - 160,000 birds. He said that if he could automate the picking up of floor eggs and dead birds, he could halve his labor costs. Max Pfund, Associate Vice President of Production at Herbrucks, agreed that automation in this area was the “holy grail.”
The Poultry Tech Summit 2023 highlighted pivotal trends in the industry, from the overwhelming presence of data to the evolving interface between hatcheries and farms. As the industry grapples with challenges like HPAI and the cost implications of cage-free production, the role of technology remains central to ensuring the industry remains competitive and efficient, while also guaranteeing the health and welfare of all broilers, layers, and breeders.
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