Keenan and Animal Health Ireland won awards awards at the Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation awards.
Keenans won the 2014 Agri-food Innovation award for its inTouch system, while Animal Health Ireland (AHI) won North/South Collaborative Innovation Award.
The award for Keenans comes after the company won the 2012 SPACE Innovation award in France for the Cloud-based PACE Connect and the 2013 Oxford Farming Conference Practice with Science Award for its Mech-fiber System.
Keenan Innovation Director, John McCurdy, said inTouch is a technology for the dairy and beef sectors which links the supply chain from farm to processor and retailer. “It is the new easy way to ensure the farmer gets more from their feeds through precision feeding and precision nutrition. Cloud technology is used to link farms around the world directly to the nutrition team in Kilkenny to deliver a repeatable result on farm which improves sustainability and profitability for farmer and processor.
Meanwhile, AHI CEO, Joe O’Flaherty, paid tribute to the hard work and dedication of the Boards and staff of both AHI and Animal Health and Welfare NI (AHWNI), who have worked closely together on developing programmes to improve animal health across the island of Ireland. He also recognised the huge financial and other contributions made by the stakeholders of both organisations, which are drawn from the respective Departments of Agriculture, the milk and beef processing sectors, the farm organisations, and from academic, research and veterinary representative organisations.
He made special mention of the active involvement by farmers north and south of the border, which through their significant investment of money and time in animal health programmes, have demonstrated their real commitment to further improving herd health in the two jurisdictions. Concluding, he remarked that the control of infectious diseases is a natural area for all-island collaboration, and looked forward to the deepening and strengthening of this collaboration in the future.