In the investigation related to agricultural IoT, I met the term “animal welfare”. Efforts in each country are evaluated by Animal Protection Index (API) from the viewpoint of protection of animals widely, not only from animal welfare perspective. The API ranges from A rank to G rank, Japan is in D rank. Countries that are ranked A are Britain, Switzerland, Austria and New Zealand. Evaluation items for ranking are (1) recognition of animal protection, (2) governance structure and system, (3) application of animal / well-fair standards, (4) provision of humanitarian education, and (5) Communication among stakeholders and improvement of awareness. The target is all animals from pet, livestock to wild animals.

Well, the relationship between Agriculture IoT and Animal Welfare is in the place where various sensors are used to record the traceability of livestock. By accumulating the information gathered by the sensor, it will be recorded accurately in what kind of environment the individual livestock was raised. In addition, by using sensor information in a timely manner, real-time remote management of livestock is also made possible. The latter is mainly used for labor saving of livestock industry and improvement in productivity, but the former contributes to the safety of food and the added value of food in addition to labor saving of recording.

In the meat industry in Europe and the United States, there are cases where rankings of five stages in terms of animal welfare conditions are attached to meat that is sold in the market. The Global Animal Partnership (GAP) established in the United States and the UK in 2008 made rules and the GAP ranking according to the rules is displayed on meat products. There is agricultural production process management (Global Agricultural Practice: GAP) in Japan, but it is different from this.

I would like to pay attention to the fact that IoT is applied continuously for many areas.

Nobuo FUJII was working for NTT R&D and NTT Groups where he studied and developed transport network operation systems. He also worked for ITU-T and other standard organizations, fora and consortia so as to develop operation system architectures and interfaces. He is an IEICE fellow. He joined CCI in 2014.