The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has won the Smart Technology Innovation Award at this year’s Leaders Awards.

For over 15 years, the [email protected] awards have acknowledged those delivering outstanding results in the use of technology in their respective organisations and businesses in the southwest region.

This year’s event was run jointly with KerrySciTech which has signed a historic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with [email protected] to develop the technology and business ecosystem in the region.

Sean Coughlan, chief executive of ICBF, commented: “This is deserved recognition for a great team of talented and dedicated people.

“They are committed to ensuring a vibrant agri-food industry, while dealing with the environmental challenges head-on,” he said.

ICBF

Based at its new innovation hub in Ballincollig, Co. Cork, ICBF provides information-based genetics services.

The company, which had doubled staff numbers over the past decade, now employs 85 people and pioneers DNA traceability for cows.

Coughlan explained that this is to ensure that future generations of cows in Ireland emit less carbon along with providing 100% transparency and traceability for consumers.

ICBF is working in collaboration with Teagasc researchers in Moorepark to refine 160 billion data points to a concise figure that individual farmers can use to make decisions at farm level.

“We are helping farmers make Ireland’s carbon footprint lower by giving them the information to select those animals that are highly productive but produce less methane.

“Dealing with 100,000 farms, our objective is to have every single bovine animal in the country genotyped. We have one of the largest databases of animal data globally.

“We process this data on a real-time basis as we receive new DNA profiles for animals and perform subsequent parentage verification/discovery,” Coghlan said.