The theme of the innovation conference was ‘Building a healthy, sustainable and secure animal agriculture industry through innovation and collaboration.’ Speakers from across the world participated, but the spotlight was on the developments expected in agtech, specifically in the livestock animal health space.

All speakers in the first session agreed that there was a need for better transparency to allow for greater value distribution in the food chain. Jeroen Van De Ven, Allflex Livestock Intelligence, an MSD company, talked about the fact that MSD had acquired a number of companies in that space to try and better explain the food journey.

He said: “Today we can trace food from birth to table. Tools are available today in real time and the industry needs to create the link to balance the farm to food chain. The industry needs better transparency to allow for better value distribution.”

The challenges in the food industry from COVID-19 were discussed at length and Cees Jan Hollander, global farming expertise manager with Danone, said the pandemic had changed the market, with consumers demanding more health-based products.

Any solution needs to be derisked so products like inland salmon can be developed

Following on from this, Sebastien Pascual, director, Agribusiness, TEMASEK Singapore, said any agtech solution for the food industry needs to work in countries like Singapore that have limited land availability to grow food.

“Any solution needs to be derisked so products like inland salmon can be developed, so there is more resilience in the existing food supply chain. Innovation is essential and I’d say you will see much more innovation in meat factories with more robotics,” he said.

Frank Mitloehner, professor and air quality specialist, Cooperative Extension in the Department of Animal Science, University of California, agreed that there should be more robotics used in factories, but said COVID-19 hadn’t impacted much on the food shelves in California.

Danish Robotics

Later in the conference, Lars Leopold Hinrichsen from the Danish Meat Research Institute said robotics were already in use and available to meat factories around the world. He described some of the meat processing tools, which he said were essential for a country like Denmark, as they have a population of 5.8m people but process 33m pigs every year.

The reason we have a vibrant meat sector in Denmark at the moment is because the technology is the best

Leopold showed a graphic comparing the number of people working in Danish slaughterhouses 20 years ago to the present day. It showed there were essentially half the number of workers for the same volume of product.

“The reason we have a vibrant meat sector in Denmark at the moment is because the technology is the best and further new technologies are coming fast in the next few years,” he said.

Lars explained that the sector is looking into advanced sensors and when combined with artificial intelligence, you get a powerful way to step up automation of robots to make them flexible and adopt to biological variation (ie no two pig carcases are the exact same).

He also talked about carcase balance, where the carcase is cut differently for different markets, and explained that companies that can stay on top of this technology win the contracts and better utilise the product so there is less waste.

Alternative proteins – yes or no?

The question about whether alternative proteins were coming and their importance was answered by Cees Jan Hollander, who said the alternative protein market was already in existence and food companies had to be involved to give consumers choice. Danone, of course, made a big move in this space, buying Whitewave foods in North America in 2018.

It’s up to those working in the agricultural space to explain to consumers how food production really works

Hollander explained: “In conventional products, some people want to know where the food comes from, whether its organic, A2 milk etc. Vegetable protein is also available now, therefore it depends on how many are going to buy the product to see if it’s successful.

“It’s up to those working in the agricultural space to explain to consumers how food production really works. It’s not possible to cover the world in plants, as the world is simply not big enough, and plants do not live out of air, so we need ruminants to convert what humans can’t eat.”

Sebastien Pascual then said alternative proteins would grow from an animal and consumer perspective. He used the example of the insect protein company, which doesn’t feed humans, but might be a key feed ingredient for fish and therefore makes it more sustainable for the future.

Pascual agreed that the industry needs to show how the animal is part of the overall solution, but also to realise that plant-based sales are currently about 0.6% of total meat sales.

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