Angus Beef Structural Trait Estimation from 3D Camera Data

加拿大牛肉生产商目前面临的挑战是，在解决消费者对养牛及其对环境、动物健康和福利以及食品安全的影响日益负面的看法的同时，如何保持生存能力。这些需求还包括使用抗生素、动物疼痛管理和有效利用环境资源。为了应对这些日益增长的经济、环境和社会压力，生产者需要创新的工具来选择尽可能高效、健康和健壮的动物用于养殖部门。在这一初级部门选择正确的动物对价值链的所有加拿大牛生产部门都有重大的下游影响。加拿大安格斯协会（CAA）的成立是为了保护和扩大安格斯品种，为加拿大牛生产者和牛肉消费者，需要新的遗传选择工具的功能性状，如乳头和乳房结构，脚和腿的结构，健康是必要的盈利和可持续的牛肉生产向前发展。目前用于评估这些性状的行业实践是由训练有素的评估员进行的高度手动的过程。人们普遍认为，这是一种高度主观、容易出错、耗时的做法，而且缺乏量化措施和永久记录。CAA寻求一种解决方案来克服这些已确定的缺点，从而快速提供准确的定量性状测量。为此，将开发一种新的基于相机的系统和相应的方法，用于肉牛结构性状的现场3D测量。它将自动计算安格斯肉牛的结构性状，以便提供现场定量评估，以识别健康和健壮的动物。

Canadian beef producers are currently challenged with remaining viable while addressing growing negative consumer perceptions of cattle production and its impacts on the environment, animal health and welfare and food safety. These demands can also include the use of antibiotics, animal pain management and the efficient use of environmental resources. To address these increasing economic, environmental and social pressures, producers need innovative tools to select the most efficient, healthy, and robust animals as possible to use in the breeding sector. Choosing the right animals at this primary sector has significant downstream impacts on all Canadian cattle production sectors of the value chain. The Canadian Angus Association (CAA), created to preserve and expand the Angus breed for Canadian cattle producers it represents and beef consumers, requires new genetic selection tools for functional traits such as teat and udder structure, feet and leg structure, and health are necessary for profitable and sustainable beef production moving forward. Current industry practice for the assessment of these traits is a highly-manual process performed by a trained assessor. It is widely recognized as highly subjective, error prone, time consuming and lacks both quantitative measures and a permanent record. The CAA seeks a solution to overcome these identified shortcomings that will rapidly provide accurate, quantitative trait measurements. To this end, a new camera-based system and accompanying methodology for on-site 3D measurement of beef cattle structural traits will be developed. It will automatically compute structural traits of Angus beef cows in order to provide on-site quantitative assessment to identify healthy and robust animals.