The Canadian Society of Animal Science Award for Technical Innovation in Enhancing the Production of Safe and Affordable Food recognizes excellence in technical innovation and teaching.

Prairie Swine Centre president and CEO Lee Whittington says Dr. Harold Gonyou has provided the tools necessary to address changes in technology, best management practices and the marketplace.

Lee Whittington-Prairie Swine Centre

He'd done some very innovative work on looking at the management of feeders and he was able to look at what were the features of a feeder that caused it to allow pigs eat more quickly, allow pigs to waste less, even some practical aspects on how easy was it to adjust the feeder.

He took a very different approach to what had been done in terms of research in that area before and he took it from the pig's perspective.

The recommendations that came out of it were things like if you change the depth of your feeder the pig will step in it less often and therefor will be less waste.

Most recently he's been recognized for his work in anticipating what's going to happen with housing of gestation sows, the movement from stalls into more open housing.

The auto-sort technology that took the industry by storm about eight or nine years ago, he ramped up a research program to address some very practical problems on how to optimize that kind of a system.

Those were some of the things he was recognized for not only leading the whole area of science and thinking in how the pig behaved in those different circumstances but also being able to get it out to the industry so it actually had an impact.

Mr Whittington notes Dr. Gonyou's career represents a successful example of applying applied animal behavior to practical industry challenges.