CHICAGO – The latest investment in the Sensors, Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technologies (SMART) program from McDonald’s Corp. and the Foundation for Food & Agriculture, announced on March 19, totaled $671,481 as part of a shared commitment to improve the welfare and better manage the production of broiler chickens by utilizing precision, automated monitoring technologies.

The SMART Broiler program was started in 2019, as FFAR and McDonald’s kicked off a public-private partnership with an investment of $4 million to utilize two phases of research grants focused on designing technology that would objectively monitor chicken welfare on commercial farms. The first phase, which included six projects, received $2,092,439 to test and fine tune potential solutions.

The latest investment for the second phase of the project is focused on adapting the initial research for application by producers and promoting the innovative technologies to the broiler production segment. The solutions supplement traditional human observations and reporting methods by automating specific welfare indicators in large-scale production houses, including gait, vocalization and behavior. Testing of the technology is being conducted on US poultry farms as well as production operations in Northern Ireland, Hungary and Poland.

“Through the commercialization and scale of SMART Broiler solutions, McDonald’s and integrators alike can anticipate improvements to their key welfare indicators and overall progress towards their respective animal welfare initiatives,” said Janet Helms, global sustainable sourcing animal health and welfare senior manager at McDonald’s. “The ability to accurately measure and demonstrate improvement in welfare and behavioral outcomes becomes a potential differentiator in a commodity market.” 

Two researchers received additional investments for the SMART Broiler Phase II program:

Marian Dawkins from the University of Oxford is receiving $271,865 to extend testing of a novel camera and computer system called OPTICFLOCK, which monitors broiler chicken flock behaviors using video cameras 24-7, in real time, focusing on key welfare indicators such as mortality, walking ability, leg health and infection.

Niamh O’Connell from University of Belfast is the recipient of $399,616 to transfer intelligent surveillance techniques for tracking humans to provide real-time monitoring of individual birds within a flock. The camera-based technology, known as FlockFocus, automatically monitors and tracks activity and the weight of birds on commercial farms. It can also monitor feeding behavior and the density of birds throughout chicken houses.

The benefits of automated, objective monitoring technology include better treatment of the birds and extends to producers whose feed conversions improve with healthy flocks in addition to lowering expenses by limiting the use of antibiotics to keep more birds healthy. The technology also increases the flexibility of operators overseeing production facilities by facilitating remote monitoring of farms from anywhere.

“Investing in precision agriculture research allows us to harness advanced technologies — like sensors, robotics and predictive analytics — to monitor animal welfare in real time, offering US producers actionable insights for better farm management, profitability and animal health,” said Jasmine Bruno, PhD, FFAR scientific program director. “These new SMART solutions bring the best research from across the globe home, creating a win-win for US farmers and flocks.”

To further support the SMART Broiler program, Amazon Web Services Inc. and Accenture provided program management, cloud services and technical consulting support to awardees. USPOULTRY also awarded $100,000 in sponsorship to the SMART Broiler program, demonstrating the strong support from the US broiler industry for this initiative.