The British supermarket giant Sainsbury’s is teaming up with New Zealand’s Techion Group to run an international technology project on sheep worming.

According to Declan Fennell of Bord Bia’s Meat Division the two-year international research and development project will roll out on-farm technology to effectively manage parasites which will ultimately improve product quality and profitability.

Fennell outlined that earlier this month, a New Zealand agri-tech company launched an innovative service called FecPakG2, which will enable sheep farmers to take faecal eggs samples, upload the photographs of the eggs to a cloud system and, within 90 minutes, technicians from Techion will email back the results to the farmer.

Designed so that farmers can take the samples themselves without the need of a vet, the FecPakG2 technology provides accurate data to help reduce the amount of drenching required.

Combining the technical know-how on worming and drenching with the technological advancements in data sharing via the cloud system, the initiative has the potential to deliver faster and quicker solutions to sheep farmers around the world.

Fennell noted that Sainsbury’s commitment towards maintaining its supply of New Zealand lamb and endeavours to reassure its customers that their lamb offering is sourced from sustainable farms is underpinned in their investment in this project under their Agricultural Research and Grant Scheme.