A cow favors one leg. A chicken breathes with their beak slightly open. A goat spends a little more time lying down, a little less time eating. A pig pins their ears back, or squeals at a higher pitch. All of these subtle changes can signal pain in farm animals before more obvious signs of suffering appear.

But on modern factory farms housing hundreds to tens of thousands of animals, those signals are easily missed.

Researchers and technologists are exploring an emerging technology known as automated pain detection to help farmers identify health problems in animals earlier and relieve their pain faster.

While the technology remains largely experimental for livestock, interest is accelerating. A growing body of research is assessing whether artificial intelligence can recognize pain in farm animals using facial expressions, gait, vocalizations and other behavioral cues. And recently a handful of startups have begun developing commercial applications.

Automated pain detection systems combine cameras, microphones and other sensors — measuring signals like facial expressions, posture, gait, vocalizations or body temperature — with machine learning to identify behaviors and physiological changes associated with pain or distress.

Supporters see the technology as a way to improve the lives of billions of farm animals worldwide. But critics worry that this type of optimization could make highly intensive, cramped environments even more economically viable, risking further expansion of factory farms while avoiding animal welfare problems inherent to the industrial farming system — in addition to concerns about worker surveillance.

Whether automated pain detection ultimately improves animal welfare, researchers say, may depend less on the technology itself than on the industrial food system in which it is deployed.

The Signs of Suffering

One of the biggest challenges in improving farm animal welfare is that animals cannot simply tell humans when something is wrong. Farmers and veterinarians generally identify pain through observed behavioral changes, such as an animal walking differently, becoming lethargic or losing their appetite.

But before those signs are obvious, the animal may already have been suffering for some time. Automated pain detection aims to help farmers intervene earlier.

Read the full article about AI in factory farms by Emily Payne at Sentient Media.