Western Australian Pork Producers Association Agtech Up-take Project

Western Australian Pork Producers Association Inc

  • Project code: PRO-015306

  • Project stage: Closed

  • Project start date: Saturday, May 29, 2021

  • Project completion date: Saturday, May 6, 2023

  • National Priority: AFI - AgriFood Innovation

Summary

Original Summary 
A collaborative project between the Western Australian Pork Producers Association, Pork Innovation WA and Apiam Animal Health to facilitate the acceptance and use of Data
Pig™ technology by WA pork producers. Data PigTM is an electronic treatment recording program used collaboratively by piggery workers, managers, and veterinarians. The pen side application synchronises with veterinary prescribed medication lists to provide accurate medical treatment and dosage instructions based on animal class, number of animals and clinical signs of disease. Antimicrobial usage data is stored on the Data PigTM web-based platform and analysed using PowerBI programming.
Data Pig™ has many applications but is particularly relevant to the pork industry’s antimicrobial stewardship program in that it closes the physical gap between farm and veterinarian by providing accurate data recording about herd health and enables real time visibility of treatment data and evaluation of treatment protocols. The data generated by the program will also streamline some of the records required to satisfy the industry quality assurance program APIQ_®.
Successful implementation of the software in the Western Australian pork industry through this pilot program will provide a sound platform for further adoption throughout Australia, thereby extending the benefits of the program to Australia’s Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy.
 
Varied Summary as of 14.12.2021

We are proposing that we use the same 10 producers who put their hands up for the Datapig project but we divert our activities to the range of software they are currently using which includes Metafarms, Cloudfarms, Pigpass and a pregnancy scanning app (BCF).  The use and application of most of this software would be enhanced by the use of the handsets that we have purchased already.  There are a couple of farms that may not be using any of this software however we, as in Sam Weekes from Portec, believes we can adapt some of the existing on-farm programs that are necessary for pork industry QA to a program that can managed via the hardware.  This would include biosecurity plans that are necessary as part of the QA program and emergency animal disease preparedness.  The biosecurity plans are a new requirement and producers are just getting their heads around what they have to do.  Anything we can do to smooth this transition will I believe have positive results if we can help them use technology to satisfy these requirements.

 

The same personnel and organisations will be involved in the project although we will need to change any reference to Apiam Animal Health to Portec, who are WA based but associated with Apiam.  The principal at Portec, Dr Kim Nairn is on board with what we are proposing.  We believe it is likely that we may get better information from this new direction due to the variety of software that is being used and also it is well established in the market in most cases.

Program

AgriFood Innovation

Research Organisation

Western Australian Pork Producers Association Inc