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Funding boost for chicken welfare research
The system will allow researchers to monitor large number of birds and track their activity.
Researchers developing vision-based system to monitor birds' behaviour.

A Queen's University Belfast (QUB) academic has received more than $300,000 in funding for research to enhance the welfare of farmed chickens.

Professor Niamh O’Connell, from the Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS), has been named of one of six recipients funded in Phase 1 of the SMART Broiler programme.

Together with Northern Ireland poultry producer Moy Park, Professor Connell will use the funding to develop a vision-based system to track and monitor the behaviour of a flock of chickens.

The system will allow researchers to monitor large numbers of birds, track their activity patterns and gather welfare indicators such as gait and feather cleanliness.

Commenting on the award, Professor O’Connell said: "We are delighted to receive this research funding. Using vision-based technologies to monitor animal behaviour offers enormous opportunities to the agri-food sector.

“Working with Moy Park, this project will trial the technology with poultry and will help us better understand how the birds engage with their environment and each other. We're particularly interested in indicators of positive emotion or 'happiness' such as play."

The SMART Broiler research initiative is awarding more than $4 million in grants and technical support to develop automated monitoring tools that precisely assess chicken welfare.

Ursula Lavery, technical and R&D director Europe at Moy Park said: “We are passionate about understanding our birds even more and are excited to continue our work in partnership with Prof O’Connell and the QUB team. This project offers the potential to really bring a step-change in how we measure the positive welfare indicators of our birds.”

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RCVS Knowledge appoints Veterinary Evidence editor-in-chief

News Story 1
 RCVS Knowledge has welcomed Professor Peter Cockcroft as editor-in-chief for Veterinary Evidence.

A world-renowned expert in evidence-based veterinary medicine, Prof Cockcroft will lead the strategic development and editorial quality of the open-access journal. He was previously in the role from 2017-2020.

Katie Mantell, CEO of RCVS Knowledge, said: "We are excited about the extensive knowledge of evidence-based veterinary medicine and clinical veterinary research that Peter brings, and we look forward to working with him over this next phase of the journal's development." 

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News Shorts
CVS Group hit by cyber attack

CVS Group, which owns more than 450 veterinary practices in the UK, has been hit by a cyber attack.

In a statement, the group said the incident involved unauthorised external access to a limited number of its IT systems. As soon as the attack was discovered, the group took its IT systems temporarily offline, causing 'considerable operational disruption'.

It has warned that the security steps taken and ongoing plans to move its operational systems and IT infrastructure to the Cloud are likely to have an ongoing impact over a number of weeks.

Due to the risk that personal information was accessed, CVS has informed the Information Commissioner's Office. The company is working with third party consultants to investigate the incident.