Sentinel farms for the UK trout industry

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Sentinel farms for the UK trout industry

• SARF and BTA funding and now Defra
• Institute of Aquaculture, FarmControl, Djournal,
  FRS, CEFAS
• Jimmy Turnbull, Ryan Kaye, Iain Berrill, Chris
  Noble

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Background

• Better use of industry data essential
• Nick Read-BTA, Robert Hughes-Skretting, Edward
  Branson-independent, many others
• Presentations earlier today
• Mortalities appear to be largest issue
• Morts far too high
• Data currently questionable quality
• Any system to use data must be easy quick and
  involve as little extra work as possible

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Proposed system

• Data will be uploaded
• Automatically from farm management software
• Can enter on line if you dont use software
• Farm management software for those that dont
  have it
• Data automatically cleaned, smoothed, and stored
  anonymously
• Rapid internal or external benchmarking
• with farm, groups of farms or industry
• Keep it as simple as possible

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What the system will currently do?

• Allows you to compare
• Number or biomass of morts
• Categorised cause of morts
• Allows you to compare
• Your farm, or group of farms
• Within group of farms, over whole industry or by
  type of farm
• Over time or
• (coming soon) by weight of fish
• Create little if any extra work
• Highly secure system

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Baseline data smoothed so you can see trends.
Number or biomass of morts
Date or average weight of fish
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Why might you need such a system?

• Find out what is happening in the industry
• Identify biggest current problems
• Identify emerging problems
• Benchmark your performance
• Allow you to direct your resources to main
  problems
• Allow you to leverage funds from government and
  other sources

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Participation of farmers?

• You must see a clear return for effort
• Minimise effort by farmer
• You are well aware of potential adverse
  implications of such information
• Welfare organisations could use data on
  mortalities against industry
• Early/easy identification of unexpected
  mortalities may open then to greater scrutiny

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Participation of farmers?

• You have previous bad experience of benchmarking
  market data
• Why did that fail lessons learned?
• Only valid external benchmark is of any value
• Need large producers
• Need other smaller producers as well
• Can the industry do with out this information

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Future issues

• Is it worth participating?
• Use previous data or start new?
• What else should it do?
• Future model for sustainable project e.g.
• Managed by BTA?
• Stand alone company
• Provided as resource for annual fee
• Attached to existing farm management software

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Thank you
Ryan is happy to demonstrate the system as it
stands