AI Could Improve Welfare of Farmed Chickens By Listening To Their Squawks (theguardian.com) 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Artificial intelligence that could improve the welfare of farmed chickens by eavesdropping on their squawks could become available within five years, researchers say. The technology, which detects and quantifies distress calls made by chickens housed in huge indoor sheds, correctly distinguished distress calls from other barn noises with 97% accuracy, new research suggests. A similar approach could eventually be used to drive up welfare standards in other farmed animals.
Each year, about 25 billion chickens are farmed around the world -- many of them in huge sheds, each housing thousands of birds. One way to assess the welfare of such creatures is to listen to the sounds that they make. "Chickens are very vocal, but the distress call tends to be louder than the others, and is what we would describe as a pure tonal call," said Alan McElligott, an associate professor of animal behavior and welfare at the City University of Hong Kong. "Even to the untrained ear, it's not too difficult to pick them out." In theory, farmers could use chickens' calls to gauge their level of distress, and enrich their housing where necessary. However, in commercial flocks containing thousands, or tens of thousands of chickens, deploying human observers is impractical. For one thing, their presence could further stress the flock, but with so many birds, objectively quantifying the number of distress calls is impossible, McElligott said.
Instead, his team has developed a deep learning tool to automatically identify chicken distress calls from recordings of intensively farmed chickens. The tool was trained using recordings that had already been manually classified by human experts, to determine which type of sound they represented. According to an evaluation published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the algorithm correctly identified 97% of distress calls. "Our end goal is not to count distress calls, but to create conditions in which the chickens can live and have a reduced amount of distress," said McElligott, who estimates that the technology could be commercially deployed within five years. Before that happens, the team will need to ensure that the recording equipment works in different types of chicken shed, as well as testing it in farms with higher or lower welfare standards to confirm the readings correlate.
Each year, about 25 billion chickens are farmed around the world -- many of them in huge sheds, each housing thousands of birds. One way to assess the welfare of such creatures is to listen to the sounds that they make. "Chickens are very vocal, but the distress call tends to be louder than the others, and is what we would describe as a pure tonal call," said Alan McElligott, an associate professor of animal behavior and welfare at the City University of Hong Kong. "Even to the untrained ear, it's not too difficult to pick them out." In theory, farmers could use chickens' calls to gauge their level of distress, and enrich their housing where necessary. However, in commercial flocks containing thousands, or tens of thousands of chickens, deploying human observers is impractical. For one thing, their presence could further stress the flock, but with so many birds, objectively quantifying the number of distress calls is impossible, McElligott said.
Instead, his team has developed a deep learning tool to automatically identify chicken distress calls from recordings of intensively farmed chickens. The tool was trained using recordings that had already been manually classified by human experts, to determine which type of sound they represented. According to an evaluation published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the algorithm correctly identified 97% of distress calls. "Our end goal is not to count distress calls, but to create conditions in which the chickens can live and have a reduced amount of distress," said McElligott, who estimates that the technology could be commercially deployed within five years. Before that happens, the team will need to ensure that the recording equipment works in different types of chicken shed, as well as testing it in farms with higher or lower welfare standards to confirm the readings correlate.
Finally! (Score:2)
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But yeah, I hear you...
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"I want to live away from cities and society but I still want the conveniences of living in a city."
I don't mind paying the premium for free range (Score:3)
But this might add pennies to the cost of caged chickens so will not be well received by industry.
This is already being done, and received well! (Score:4, Interesting)
The Blockchain Chickens Bringing the Future to Free-Range
GoGo Chicken marries free-range poultry with high-tech surveillance. Each bird wears an ankle bracelet that counts its steps as it clucks, squabbles, and roams. The same blockchain ledger used in cryptocurrency transactions tracks information such as the chicken's age, daily step count, and even time of death. Customers who have already pre-purchased a chicken can view all the details on an app.
https://jdcorporateblog.com/jd... [jdcorporateblog.com]
JD fits each chicken with a specially designed pedometer, with the aim of having each bird take one million steps during the rearing process. The company uses blockchain technology for maximum quality assurance and full traceability. Since early 2018, JD customers have been able to review details about the rearing process for every chicken they buy. A scan of the QR code on the poultryâ(TM)s packaging allows buyers to view detailed information on sourcing, feeding intervals and more
Such chickens cost three times the average, but are still in very high demand - http://chinaplus.cri.cn/news/c... [chinaplus.cri.cn]
Liu said, each low income family would receive 100 chicks for free, with a pedometer attached to each of their legs. The chickens must be raised free range, and run at least 1 million steps before meeting JD.com's purchasing standards. They'll then be bought back for more than 100 yuan (14.6 USD).99% of chickens on the Chinese market move less than three meters in their whole life, explained Liu. Compared to the 45 days of raising broiler chickens, the feeding period for the free range birds will be around 160 days. Theyâ(TM)ll also enjoy a diet of fruit and vegetables three times a week. As a result, the prices for the free range chickens will be much higher than broiler chickens. On JD.com, free range birds are sold at 128, 168 and 188 yuan based on their weight, while other chickens are sold for 50 yuan on average.
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"Free range" doesn't mean what you think it does. It means the birds have "access" to the outside. In practice, this means the farmer can leave the barn door open with a semicircular 1 ft chicken wire fence around it the opening. The barn full of 10,000 chickens technically have access to the outside so they can now be labeled as free range. In practice, none of the birds even walk out to that 1 ft opening, because modern farm chickens have been bred to be so fat that they don't move much and are used to (a
Re: I don't mind paying the premium for free range (Score:2)
This is also just virtue signalling to like minded others btw
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No reason to hate, it's practically a critical component of human society. Our entire political process is built off the back of it. Let's just not pretend any of us are above it, and yes, posting this is in and of itself a virtue signal.
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I also prefer pastured beef and pork products raised without gestation crates. More people should care more about the way the animals raised for them are treated.
If that is virtue signaling, so be it. I'm not going to become a vegetarian, but I can put my money where my mouth is when it comes to basic farmed animal welfare. I wish more people would.
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Actually the chicken products I buy conform to the Swiss aviary standards. Though I agree not everything labelled free range is the same.
https://www.canadianpoultrymag... [canadianpoultrymag.com]
bottom line (Score:4, Insightful)
we exploit such huge numbers of beings daily that it is impossible for us to monitor when the level of torture starts hurting benefits. deep learning to the rescue.
except that's not learning at all ...
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clean up in sector 3 (Score:2)
The first step in the fully automated chicken factory, monitoring the birds.
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Mod this up, it's funny! Well for the aviation nerds at least ^^
That's seriously idiotic (Score:5, Informative)
You can tell if chickens are in distress by just looking at them, if you know anything about chickens. And if you don't, you don't have any business running a business involving thousands of them. There's no need for squawk analysis unless your goal is to detect when they're being eaten. You really, really don't need it to determine if their quality of life is tolerable.
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Modern chicken farms have barns with literally thousands of chickens standing side-by-side. The idea that you could monitor individual chickens for distress (either by sight or by some machine) is absurd. You'd never be able to find a specific chicken in the pack, even if you wanted to.
Further, the idea the farmer would even care if an individual chicken is in distress seems highly unlikely. Chickens in these barns die all the time- usually of heart attacks from being so plump that their hearts can not hand
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You haven't understood the fine summary. They don't give two fucks about any individual bird (which is the problem that made someone think this technology would be useful in the first place.) They are only proposing using this technology to determine comparative levels of distress.
Wow... (Score:3)
Working in IT you often come across products that basically do what you could do by yourself, even script yourself, if you could be arsed and then slap a price sticker on it with some yearly warranty coming along.
This feels exactly like such a thing. You can hear their distress calls yourself... and the solution would be adjust the way they live.
Wow. Just wow. So what it basically takes is a farmer that first cares enough and second is willing to then react and invest the money to make it better.
We already know a lot about what is good for chickens and what isn't. What is good usually lowers ROI. What isn't raises it. Chicken farmers, and correct me if I'm wrong there, aren't exactly swimming in money.
So am I the only one who thinks this product is a scam? Take the money THAT would cost and invest it in the chicken housing directly... I think they'll be way happier that way.
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Also, we invented an AI to do this ten thousand years ago. It costs a couple dollars to manufacture, pennies to operate, and is a multitasker (hunting, security, cuddling, farting).
If they would come out with a new model that replaces the farts with carbon capture and Lithium Ion batteries, that would just be great. /s
"Welfare" is such a cynical term (Score:3)
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Your whataboutism is pointless bullshit. Most western countries have laws against torturing humans, and those which don't definitely don't give a flying fuck about chickens. It may shock you to know that we don't all need to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Or maybe we should remove your access to sanitation because someone somewhere is shitting in hole in the ground.
The USA also has more people imprisoned per capita
I know you're a man, but common even we can work on two problems at once. If you can't maybe you need to work on your attention span.
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Perhaps you should inform yourself of the USA's status/reputation on torture around the world & within its borders. Ever heard of "black sites"?
I have. Maybe you should inform yourself at how exceedingly rare such cases are in the grand scheme of things, as opposed to the many other countries where normal every day citizens are suffering atrocities.
I get it, you not only have a singular attention span and can only ever look at one issue, but you also are desperate to let perfect get in the way of good enough.
I hope you don't make any meaningful decisions in your life, you likely only hold back yourself and all those around you.
What part of "while they're at it" didn't you get?
What part of whatabou
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Maybe you should inform yourself at how exceedingly rare such cases are in the grand scheme of things, as opposed to the many other countries where normal every day citizens are suffering atrocities.
You need to inform yourself better. Try starting with "The School of the Americas." Then there's the systematic US-run torture camps in Afghanistan & Iraq. Those are the most famous ones, just for starters. Feel free to search for other US-backed torture programmes with Human Rights Watch: https://www.hrw.org/ [hrw.org] There's a lot of them. It's not "rare in the grand scheme of things" even if that were an excuse... & you were trying to excuse torture, weren't you?
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I hope not. This is the last thing we need with the price of food going the way it is.
Humanizing chickens is ridiculous.
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Let's assume we should treat these animals with the very same regard as a field of potatoes.
Stressed animals get sick more often, require more antibiotics, and there is always the potential for these diseases to leap and effect us.
Better production also means better efficiency, and thus profit.
Think of the opportunities! (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait to see this AI repurposed to monitor office worker welfare in their cubicle farms!
*squawks*
Intelligence? (Score:2)
Detecting sound patterns is not intelligence. My 80s cassette tape deckâ(TM)s loudness meters probably are pretty close algorithm-wise.
And updating an environment based on measurements is not more intelligent than a thermostat or automatic windshield wipers.
But do we care? (Score:3)
The problem with distress in animals in industrial farms is not that we need some magical AI to find the problem, it's that the farmers (reads: companies) don't give a shit because ... profits.
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Sadly it's not even just "profits" - it's the people who consume chicken and chicken products. Do people really care, unless the product they buy in the store tastes different or costs more?
So what the general public is doing is outsourcing their ethics - "they" (in aggregate; there are individuals who do this) don't care about how things are made, by choosing different brands or different products entirely or whatever - they simply want their chicken or whatever and may be "shocked, shocked I say" to find
Tay taking it to the next level (Score:2)
my chickens have become racist slur squaking monsters within a matter of days!
It's The Matrix... (Score:2, Funny)
Temple Grandin (Score:1)
Use it to augment human caretakers (Score:2)
Should run on cheap hardware (RasPi?) and alert the farmers rearing the chickens.
It could augment human supervision, especially if things go south with the controlled environments (water, ventilation, heat, predation, theft) after hours.
Needs a British accent (Score:2)
Mrs. Tweedy! The chickens are revolting!
Why restrict it to chickens? (Score:2)