Emalyn Loudon is the Technical Services Manager for Westpork Pty Ltd – a 10,000 sow operation in Western Australia. Her role involves managing quality assurance, welfare benchmarking, research and development, and staff training across Westpork’s 12 farms.

The Ron Collins Memorial Travel Award has been designed to assist a person, involved in any aspect of the Australian pork industry, to travel overseas and further investigate a topic which must be innovative and is of benefit to the industry. The total award is valued at up to A$10,000.

Welfare benchmarking in Australia has been identified by industry as being important to the continual
improvement of animal welfare on-farm. She developed the Westpork-specific assessment protocol
and recording system that benchmarks on a monthly basis across 10 farms. This work is seen as being
progressive in demonstrating the industry’s ongoing commitment to welfare.

The UK pork industry is currently the only industry implementing welfare benchmarking on a broad
scale. Ms Loudon will use the grant to travel to the UK to meet with industry bodies and producers to see how benchmarking works for the British pork industry, gain an understanding of the drivers for welfare benchmarking in their industry, and gain insight into how producers share benchmarking data.

While in the UK and Europe, she will also meet with researchers to gain a better understanding of
the range of indices available and how they reflect welfare status, as well as attend the 6th
International Conference on the Assessment of Animal Welfare at Farm and Group Level taking place in France in September 2014.

The insights she will gain on this trip will ensure Australia remains at the forefront of welfare assessment and the ongoing positive changes that can be adopted by the Australian pork industry.

Ms Loudon has been involved with the Australian pork industry since 1997. Having worked in both production and industry positions (state and national), she has gained a solid understanding of issues facing the pork industry and has made, and will continue to make, a significant contribution to individual businesses and the industry as a whole.