Farmscape for June 27, 2018

A Professor with the University of Pennsylvania is confident the use of facial recognition will created a new dimension of biosecurity for swine farms.
3D Biometric Technology uses facial recognition to uniquely identify individuals and determine whether or not they can access a swine barn.
Dr. Thomas Parsons, a Professor and Director Swine Research and Training with the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, says workers typically need 24 to 48 hours down time when they move from one swine barn to another and this system is helps guard against people breaking a biosecurity protocol.

Clip-Dr. Thomas Parsons-University of Pennsylvania:
This is an exciting new technology that uses an infrared camera that allows it to create a 3-D image of a person's face and then using facial recognition software, essentially creates these biometrics so it makes measurements of certain features of an individual face and then uniquely identifies them.
The way this system works is then it's fed into a database and that's used to control entry into the farm.
You would show up, your face would be scanned, the computer checks to see whether or not you have the clearance to get into that farm based on your biosecurity history, so if you've been on another farm, where have you been?
If you meet the security requirements, then you're allowed in the farm.
What that does is it takes the responsibility off the individual of making a decision about whether or they're biosecure and puts it into much more objective system that can dictate when people are safe to move into farms or not.

Dr. Parson says biosecurity is the foundation for ensuring healthy pigs and healthy pigs will grow faster and be better at feed conversion, there will less mortality, reduced medications costs, reduced labor costs and more full value pigs going to market.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork