Husbandry…

As the clock/radio/alarm sprang into action this morning I caught the end of the Farming Programme and heard about the development of a new “app”. This is going to be used by suppliers to a large supermarket to measure expressions of positive emotions in livestock. Now this is something I find tricky to understand to be honest. How can you tell if all the herd of cattle are happy? Do they smile at the farmer? Do sheep grin? Probably we’ve all seen “Happy Eggs” for sale and are all aware that battery hens are now a thing of the past with free-range and deep litter environments preferred. So presumably the point of the app will be to improve the conditions the animals are kept in and prevent stress in the creatures. This is clearly a good thing and it will be interesting to see if the app is awarded a prize at the Food and Drink Awards this weekend. Best of luck!