2016 Dr. F.X. Aherne Prize Winners Named

By  Bruce Cochrane.

A maintenance supervisor with the Prairie Swine Centre and the president of Steve's Livestock have been named this year's winners of the Dr. F.X. Aherne Prize.

The Dr. F.X. Aherne Prize, named in honor of the late Dr. Frank Aherne, a professor of swine nutrition and production at the University of Alberta, was awarded yesterday as part of the 2016 Banff Pork Seminar.

Dr. Ben Willing, an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Sciences with the University of Alberta and chair of the Innovation Session, notes the award was created to recognize innovators in the swine industry and anyone who comes up with an idea that will make the industry better, whether for staff or for the animals would qualify.

Dr. Ben Willing-University of Alberta:
We had two winners this year.
One was Sam Gelowitz and he designed a cart for carcass removal for large carcasses.

This has been a challenge for some people, both on the physicality side of things and a safety side of things so the electrified cart allowing to pull a large carcass onto a pallet jack to be easily able to remove those animals from the facility.
The second winner was Steve Brandt and he's from Steve's Livestock Transport.

He brought us a hydraulic lift deck trailer.
That was a mechanism within a trailer to be able to load pigs on a single level and then hydraulically lift each level of a 3 level truck, reducing the need for animals to go up ramps.
Certainly that's an improvement for the animal welfare as well as for the truck drivers having to deal with these animals.

Dr. Willing says the hope is that this award will encourage people to continue to innovate and share those ideas with their fellow producers to improve the industry.

Source: Farmscape