Mr. Vance neatly captures the challenge at hand for producers and processors: how do we most effectively open the doors of our barns and plants to share information that (some) consumers and retailers are asking for, while avoiding the presumption that we can or should “educate” (read, indoctrinate) stakeholders about our world-view?

Lacuna believes one good starting point is to develop a comprehensive, end-to-end, approach to animal handling, in which objective data both enables and validates continuous improvement.

A recent post by Raoul Baxter on Meatingplace [free subscription required] was great – he discussed how chicken production has become significantly more efficient in the past 75 years.  It used to take 14-15 weeks to produce a 3.5-pound chicken (3:1 feed conversion); today it takes a little over give weeks (1.5-1.7 feed conversion).  Likewise, when my father started producing turkeys in earnest in the 1940s and ’50s, it was considered exceptional to produced a flock of 19-pound turkeys in 19 weeks (~4:1 feed conversion).  Today, a flock of turkeys could weigh near or at 50 pounds in 19 weeks (feed conversion below 2.5:1).

These incredible changes in animal production parallel those in other commodities.  Last week I rode in a new combine that was handling 100 bushels of dry corn every 133 seconds (tracked and recorded by its on-board GPS computer-monitoring system).  Seventy years ago, my father handpicked corn alone—if one person could pick 100 bushels in a day, it was a whopping day.

Yet, efficiency is not by default an innocent goal or benign master.  For meat production—unlike coal and corn and other supply chains that have become remarkably more efficient—the raw product is alive and characterized by individual traits that respond differently to stress.  The stress that impacts a corn plant may affect the bottom line, if that stress is significant enough—but it does not register in the crop’s behavior, nor with the consumer, in the same degree as stress endured by a live chicken, turkey or pig. 

The point is, major live-meat suppliers have developed a commodity production mindset: produce meat as cheaply as possible.  Which may benefit us to a point.  But in pursuit of producing the cheapest meat possible, we must take care not to implement least-cost models that compromise the animal.  For example, high corn costs or soybean meal may spur us to create reformulate feed rations.  Alternative inputs may make sense on the nutritionist’s computer model by reducing cost-per-ton by five dollars, but the impact on the animal is often less predictable.  The individual animal and flock response may be a slower growth curve, or an increase in variability of individual weights or body confirmation (feathering or gait issues). 

All meat producers and processors are walking this fine line…if not, they would not survive this low-margin business.  The critical question is, how does variability of performance relate to well being?  And what level of variability is acceptable to the consumer, processor, USDA inspector, producer and genetics company? 

Lacuna Technologies exists to answer those questions by collecting and understanding objective data on individual animals, and by creating comparison models.  We believe objective information will benefit all stakeholders, and will impact how decisions are made and executed.  We believe our system will ultimately change behavior in live production as least-cost production models are shown to approach the gray zone of acceptable individual live-animal performance.  Processors and growers and retailers are in business to profit.  But, when we push past the gray zone, individual animal performance will become increasing inconsistent.  Lacuna will be able to measure the tipping point so that both retailer and consumer can respond accordingly.

A majority of our population used to be involved in producing food; now, less than 2% of us are engaged in that.  But we all have a stake in it, and many have opinions.  It benefits the system if we can collect and share—and act upon—objective information.

We have initiated contact with various people and companies regarding Lacuna Technologies.  In such meetings, we present what we believe is a transformative feature of the Lacuna system–our ability to measure and assess the individual performance of each bird during the loading, transportation and unloading.  We believe that feature will be transformative for producers and processors, certainly, but also for consumers: translating individual bird performance into a consumer-friendly format—imagine an animal well-being equivalent to the nutrition facts panel—would empower consumers as never before.

A not uncommon response to our presentation is: “More information about animals will confuse the customer and create more problems.”  And: “A customer who knows too much about processing and live production causes more problems than a customer who is blissfully ignorant.”

In short, I realize some of us are comfortable addressing only the “least common denominator” …perceived consumer ignorance.  I, at times, scratch my head wondering, how much does the average Joe or Jane know, or care to know?  We all have our moments.  But treating the consumer as a soft-minded, ignorant lamb is diametrically opposed to my personal and professional beliefs.

More importantly, isn’t it true that some the most vocal anti-meat forces have been using this strategy for years—assuming the consumer is too ignorant or impatient to understand the detailed facts, and, in place of the facts, painting a compelling and emotion-driven version of reality?  We moan about the success of such approaches (Prop 2 California), yet our own attitudes about the consumer are arguably the flip side of the same coin. 

How much more powerful would it be to supply objective data to all stakeholders—from breeders to consumers—tailored to their individual needs?

In short, it is at best condescending (and, at worse, an opportunity cost) to classify consumers as insufficiently intelligent to make sound decisions about purchasing ethically raised meat.

To sum up my thoughts on this topic… I recently saw this quotation attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

Last Thursday I attended the “Advances and Current Issues in Animal Wellbeing” symposium sponsored by Dr. Yvonne Thaxton (Professor and Director, Center for Food Animal Wellbeing) at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. It was an excellent program with a wide range of speakers and topics. Dr. Thaxton expected around 50 people, but was surprised that nearly 120 attended (including her 93-year-old father – a Uof AR graduate himself). One of the main discussion points that resonated loudly to me (and a primary foundation for the existence of Lacuna Technologies) was the underlying quest by the meat producers, processors and retailers to provide consumers with objective, understandable information about how their meat is being produced, i.e., is it accomplished ethically? 

A few colleagues in the audience knew of my father, Dan Sinn.  They faintly remembered years ago when he was involved with the National Turkey Federation board, on which he served for many years as a representative for Illinois.  My father is now nearly 87 years of age, stills lives in the farm house where he was born, never left the farm… (the longest time away was for his two-week honeymoon). His health is challenged… his body has endured enormous hard work as a player in the early years of the fledgling turkey industry. (Below is a brief overview of his turkey venture that is still being written yet today.)

As I sat last Thursday in the palatial confines of the John W. Tyson Poultry Science Building, I recalled my father waking me up early one morning when I was maybe five years old.  I had six siblings… Mom and Dad’s time with us individually was limited as they were constantly working to take care of our needs and those of the farm. Dad told me he required help to wash waters in the brooder house. I later discovered his knees were bothering him from arthritis and he couldn’t bend down. But I felt special as Dad picked me to help him… I felt I was a player, and it gave me a sense of value at a very early age. The symposium brought to mind this early childhood memory of being introduced to live-poultry production. Funny how this event stayed with me…. maybe the moral of the story is, if you wake a young child, you may shape his inner “well-being” forever.

***

Dan Sinn

In 1938, Johann Sinn bought one of his sons, 13-year-old Dan, his first set of 25 bronze turkey poults. The teenager proceeded to turn a hefty profit for that time.  He took those profits and built a small brooder house with screened porch for the 200 poults he grew out in 1939.  And Dan Sinn and his family have grown turkeys (and an occasional flock of chickens) on that and nearby farms every one of the past 73 years, more than 3.5 million turkeys in all.

For the first 12 years, Dan had a range operation… grinding the feed and, for predator control, sometimes even sleeping in the feed hut out on the range with the turkeys.

In 1951, he built a two-story, 40- by 150-foot brooder house, which is still in use today…at least two flocks up to seven flocks a year have been brooded in this same brooder house every year since 1951.   In 1957, he built the first of two 50- by 400-foot pole sheds on the farm – initially to serve as a conditioning barn for the birds during the period between brooder house and range, and later used for the total grow-out period.  That same year Dan switched to white turkeys in response to consumer preference for skin color.

For 11 years, starting in 1955, market conditions were such that Dan built and operated his own federally inspected turkey-processing plant at the farm, marketing fresh-dressed and frozen Sinn Turkey at retail throughout the region and at wholesale to various local-school, federal-governmental, and European entities.  Pushing 2 million pounds of final product annually, which was a sizable plant in the early 1960’s.

Getting enough help was a constant challenge in rural Illinois.  But a bigger problem turned out to be overzealous federal food-safety inspection in the early 1960s.  APHIS inspectors—over-reacting to a single salmonella outbreak in chicken eggs—intensified inspection guidelines across the nation.  For a few years, the poultry meat industry endured enormous hardships before a rational balance could be re-established among food safety, business sustainability, and governmental regulatory enforcement.  Dan Sinn’s turkey plant was one of the many casualties during that period.

As an aside, there have been recent glimpses of the specter of a repeat of that scenario – but this time on the animal-welfare-regulation front.  In 1967, Dan started contract growing of turkeys for a distant processing plant, Bil Mar Foods (later acquired by Sara Lee Foods).  I was five-years old, and vivid memories of the family turkey enterprise start in this year.

Responses to our recent guest column in “The National Provisioner” have been interesting.  One person asked me what sentence in the article resonates mostly loudly to me.  Without a doubt: “We can and must balance the demands of consumers concerned about animal care — some of whom are increasingly raising their voices and voting their consciences — with those of retailers, processors and producers.”

Lacuna Technologies measures individual live bird performance* during loading, in transport trailers, and again when unloaded at processing plants (poultry automated loading and unloading has our patented technology).  We locate, inspect, measure and track live animals during the final hours prior slaughter.   In the process, compromised birds will be detected utilizing objective data.  This information will then be available, in real time, for a retailer/processor to use to make decisions about what animals belong in its supply chain.  

In essence, Lacuna Technologies provides visual measurements to illustrate individual animal state being versus the current practice (little transparency).  The challenge is how best to present this information.  A retailer might decide to illustrate their commitment to animal well being right at the meat counter via a large screen display, or via a code on packaging enabling consumers to instantly view key data about meat origins.  Whatever media they chose, we believe the information must be visual and convey meaningful insights “at-a-glance.”

(* What do we mean by performance?  What measurements are captured?  In short, Lacuna gathers metrics around flock mortality, individual weight variation, thermal body confirmation, outside body temperature, leg/foot pad measurements, individual live bird shrink and dead-on-arrival (DOA) analysis.  For details, see this post.)

Back on the farm, Ruby the house cat left us for 18 days… during all of the heat.  We spent more time than I would like to admit looking for her.  Unlike house cats, it’s not unusual for outside cats to be gone for a month or so and then return.  Something like an impromptu trip to Vegas.  My mother was distressed and believed Ruby would return.  I didn’t share this thought but kept quiet.  We had a fresh batch of kittens ready to be weaned and I wondered which one might be Ruby’s replacement.  Then, as abruptly as she left, Ruby appeared in the barn yard… looking healthy, not a scratch.  She was held and petted by everyone… loved the attention.  Attached is picture of Matt (named after Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke-fame, James Arness is one of mother’s favorite actors) – Matt is being tamed for partnership with Ruby.  He had no idea his sole objective was to be mother’s pet while Ruby took her trip to Vegas.  OK, we have no idea where Ruby went or has been since (she took off for another three-day adventure)…she offers no apologies and no hints.  Her body states unequivocally: what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

A few days ago we received 13,000 male turkeys (toms).  Spent the previous week preparing our 60-year-old brooder house.  This brooder house hasn’t missed a year without at least two flocks of turkeys being started in it (the first flock in 1951 was of bronze turkeys; white turkeys had yet to be widely commercialized).

We work on the gas stoves, waterers and other equipment to ensure that everything is operating in top order… we can’t risk anything quitting working.  But sanitizing is the top priority.  We start by pressure-washing with hot water the walls, windows, ceiling, floor, waters, feed lines, and following that with a disinfectant rinse.  Then the building sits empty… the hot weather is a great disinfectant in itself.  We haul bags of wood shavings to cover the floor, then wash hand-waterers and feeders. 

The weather was hot and muggy, and we were in a constant sweat just from fighting off the flies.

The baby turkeys (or poults) arrived around 5 p.m. after a nearly seven-hour drive from the hatchery.  We unloaded 13,000 poults in less than 25 minutes.  With Monday’s high temps reaching the lower 100’s, the poults were extremely warm upon arrival.  Over the next five hours, they attacked the water.  I stayed in the brooder house watching over them… making sure they didn’t pile and smother.  A few of them became wet as they crashed the waterers with reckless abandon.  Once wet they became cold… so I adjusted the heat higher.  This yo-yo’ing demanded all of my experience to read the birds and make the right adjustments.  Yes, we bemoan the hot weather and wonder, could this have been done or that.  It doesn’t really matter; here are 13,000 baby turkeys that you want to keep alive… so you do what you must.  By 10 pm the birds finally leveled off the water and began to eat.

Today is day three: the high heat persists and the birds are lethargic.  Babies like heat but need periods of cooler temperatures to offset it.  Night time temperatures drop only into the upper 70’s.  Have spent an inordinate amount of time in the barn with them… they appear okay, but I suspect the high heat has already taken a minor toll that may possibly be seen when we sell them the first week of December (lower weights and more variable individual weights).

This afternoon I attended the funeral of my dear friend and third-grade teacher.  She was 92-years-old and had attended a one-room country school house with my father back in the early 1930’s.  As we traveled from the church to the cemetery, I found some solace in the simple courtesy of people pulling their cars off the road to allow the procession to pass.  At the gravesite, our small group was reciting the 23rd Psalm and the sweat trickling down my forehead wasn’t like that from the labor of the farm…  somehow it was the sweat of humble finality as a teacher and life-long friend was laid to rest.  This sweat was uplifting and comforting.  As I thanked our Creator for her being part of my life, I thought about our resistance to the heat, how we bark and complain, and how, this afternoon, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

In 1995, I happened to observe a unique machine in operation: it was being used to fill dump-trailers with shelled corn stored in silica-sand mines. The machine was designed to fill the trailers in a place with serious space constraints. It featured a 16-ft extensible and retractable belt frame that conveyed the corn from the floor of the mine into a dump-trailer, which subsequently carried the grain to a barge on the Mississippi River.

I observed this machine through the prism of a turkey grower and loader. And started thinking about how a similar machine might be constructed to move turkeys into transport coops on a trailer.

Eventually, this observation drove the design of a machine that now carries a turkey on a variable-pitch, main-line conveyor belt from the barn floor to a horizontal, head-section conveyor belt which continues to operate when the head-section conveyor belt is extended into the coop, already on the trailer outside the barn.  Once fully extended into the coop, which is the full width of the trailer, the head section belt is retracted. During retraction, the birds drop off onto the coop floor –all with no sign of stress: no struggling, no vocalizing, just hunkering. 

In one trial run, early on, the machine operation reversed.  Eureka! A similar machine could be built to unload the birds at the processing plant after their journey from the farm.

No more manhandling turkeys—at either loading or unloading. 

Since that original serendipitous moment, we’ve continued to work to refine and extend the system.

We finished shipping turkeys yesterday.  Nearly 10,000 birds averaging 43 pounds farm weight. 

One week prior, we began pulling the feed away from the turkeys at 8:00 a.m., re-starting it at 7:30 p.m., training the birds for the heat and for shipping.  We also added electrolytes in the water. 

Five days prior, temperatures rose to 90 degrees plus.

Starting Monday, we loaded 12 large trailers, four trailers each morning for three days.  I was up before 4 am, turning off the feed lines, and raising them so we could build a corral to herd the turkeys into.  Overall they responded well as they were a fit and healthy flock.   They had excellent walking capabilities, which made it much easier to herd. 

Yet, by Monday afternoon, temperatures peaked at 96 degrees.  Large turkeys are not designed for this weather.  They do not sweat, but pant… utilizing their lungs to cool their bodies, like dogs and cats do.  When my father raised turkeys in the fifties and early sixties, turkeys would weigh 19 pounds in 19 weeks… now are turkeys are over 40 pounds in 19 weeks, albeit with the same lung size/volume.  Despite all the genetic improvements of turkeys, we have not increased their lung size.  So it’s a challenge to keep birds fit in high heat.

Of course, with the pressure of heat and loading… sleep hours in short supply.  By 5 a.m., help arrived including two brothers, sister in law, niece, nephew, cousin and two friends.  And, my 79-year-old mother helped out for a few hours.   Truly a family event.  Admittedly we weren’t the Super Bowl champions of loading crews, but we have many years of experience of what to do and what not to do.   Keep in my mind, we are independent producers… if we lose a bird because of heat or mishandling them during the loadout, that’s our loss.   It was highly demanding physical work and the body wasn’t ready for it, but the adrenalin was flowing freely…..  

Our automated loader required a few adjustments but handled the 12 loads easily… I kept the belt speed at an even, steady rate…. Wasn’t trying to break speed records for loading, but just aiming to match loading speed to the people around me, the turkeys, and the hot conditions.  I choose caution versus bravado in these events.  Frankly, it doesn’t pay to be a hero…. yeah, I’ve tried….

After the last load departs (below) there is a sense of satisfaction.  Working with family is more delicate than with regular employees, yet when everyone is on the same page I think we could match a veteran loading crew… 

During intense times, you tend to see mundane things in a different light.  Before loadout, a younger brother going on vacation had asked us to watch his dog, Tanner: a yellow lab, a big dog yet in its puppy stage.  She started following me around.  Everywhere.  When I was walking in the turkey barns, she was walking outside the barn with me… no matter how hot it got.  In the evening she was waiting for me or my older brother.  Not in the way, but just wanting to be nearby.  Surprisingly, it added some comfort to what was a stressful seven days.

In the end, the timing of this loadout was fortunate as the forecast for this coming weekend and early next week calls for more intense heat… mid nineties for five or so days.  I imagine there are many turkey farmers and other livestock farmers who will be on the edge keeping their livestock alive… and I definitely understand their burden now.

We are heavily focused on preparing to ship our turkeys.  As for the processor requirements, we take blood samples and body fat samples which are sent to a lab for testing.  Yesterday, an accredited veterinarian came to the farm and walked through the turkeys to assess their health.  He signed a document along with his accreditation number, and I then faxed the document to our processor.  Goal is to ensure high-quality, wholesome turkeys with the support of data and inspection.

I spent the past few days working on our third-generation automated turkey loader.  With the warm weather, our belts expanded because of the heat… essentially they have excessive slack.   I’m tightening the belt tension mechanism., greasing bearings, monitoring all of the  fluids in the engine and hydraulic system.  Check, recheck and check again.  

Designing and building this machine from the ground up, with two prototypes in the experience column, I well understand how this machine operates.  I designed it to withstand high tolerances… plenty of over-capacity.  Experiences on the farm and with machinery have taught me to the value of exceeding engineering recommended requirements… In particular, large power supply and double the cooling capacity.   Plus bearings and large shafts that could withstand heavy stress.  Many more features designed under this mindset… aiming for durable, yet simple equipment.  If engineering reflects what this designer is made of, then so be it.   Yes, there is also a financial consideration in all of this, but sometimes one still must spend an extra dollar knowing the investment will likely eliminate an ill-timed machine failure.  So I envision the equipment operating at peak performance, in all environments, with minimum repairs needed.  A machine for the long-haul.  

Mother Nature is promising us temperatures in the 90’s during our load out this weekend.  We will start loading at 6 a.m., if not a few minutes earlier, while the weather is cool.   We’ll have a thousand gallon water tank on hand to douse the birds a few minutes before they depart the farm.  They will cool off instantly as the trailer is driving down the highway at 60 m.p.h.  This flock is healthy and I believe they can withstand the stress of the trip.  For our part, we have family and friends to help… Even with the trials and tribulations, it is always a good feeling selling a flock of turkeys… after 136 days of the animals being a part of my day, they are gone and to be consumed by the public.  There is satisfaction in providing wholesome animals and earning an honest living in the process.  

***

For the 4^th of July, I brought my elderly parents to my aunt’s condo to watch some fireworks.  We drove home late at night.  As I was helping my father out of the car, I knew he was frustrated by his mobility issues, so I reminded him that at least he didn’t have to climb to the roof of an old barn to watch the fireworks.  He chuckled… as a little boy he and his brothers and sister would scale the peak of the barn, roughly 30 feet in the air, to watch a fireworks display from a nearby town.  This was back in the 1930’s… times have changed, and progress marches on.  But the thrill of watching of fireworks will endure for many generations.

Start of the week was cool and wet… the forecast calls for a few days of heat the end of this week that will keep me on my toes.  For as long as I can remember, at fourth of July celebrations we had turkeys and kept close eye on them.  One story comes to mind. About 25 years ago, we ranged our turkeys outside… had outdoor shelter, feeders and waterers.   On this July 4^th, fighter jets were in the area for a show they decided to fly low and maneuver over our range turkeys.  The noise was loud as it could be.  The jets came and went… maybe a minute at the most.   I was impressed for a split second until I remembered the range turkeys wouldn’t react favorably.  Immediately, I went to the ranges – the turkeys had scattered everywhere and I spent the rest of the day finding them and herding them back to the range.   It was a mess.  So whenever I see the “flying angels” I hearken back to the havoc they did to our range turkeys many years ago…

I am on the road this week in Washington, D.C., introducing our technology. I hope I can find a place to park my truck….