the texas center for applied technology (tcat) a research center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the institute for infectious animal diseases (iiad) a department of homeland security science and technology center of excellence recently released a custom system for the national dairy farmers assuring responsible management (farm) programtm that builds on and further expands the agconnect® technology directed by the national milk producers federation (nmpf) in partnership with dairy management inc the farm program was developed to ensure animal care excellence in the dairy industry by providing consumers with the assurance and knowledge that animals receive the highest standards of care the voluntary program includes a comprehensive certification that consists of education on-farm evaluations and third-party evaluation the national dairy farm programtm is having a tremendous impact across the dairy industry and improving the industry as a whole said dr gerald parker iiad interim director through the integration of agconnect® technology were looking forward to helping the industry with their goal of continuous improvement by improving the efficiency and effectiveness by which the programs data is reported and managed the new system expands the capabilities available to evaluators cooperatives and industry associations allowing them to better manage the program and providing them with greater flexibility said dr keith biggers tcat director for computing and information technology and iiad information analysis systems theme leader it provides a web-based portal for managing organization-specific data cross-platform mobile applications to support on-farm data collection by evaluators and a dashboard interface for monitoring and reporting on aggregate-level trends across the industry iiad has previously partnered with the dairy industry and nmpf on other projects including the development and validation of an assay for detection of foot-and-mouth disease virus in bulk tank milk samples we have a very productive history with the dairy industry and were excited to extend that partnership into agconnect® said parker i have no doubt that this newly developed system will not only meet the growing needs of the farm program but that it will also help the program be more efficient robust and reliable - and will be able to expand in new directions as it continues to evolve iiad and tcat have a proven history in developing mobile applications using the agconnect® technology to support a variety of different animal health domains agconnect® offers a flexible data collection management and sharing architecture that can be used to support a variety of needs this architecture allows for data integration aggregation and sharing/distribution in a fully controlled manner to support shared situational awareness and decision making agconnect® can also support emergency response business continuity biosurveillance and other related areas agconnect® has had an excellent track record in helping take agriculture programs to new heights and we are delighted to partner with them to further advance the farm program said emily meredith vice president of animal care at nmpf and director of the farm program our cooperative members and second-party evaluators had been asking for a mobile application and updated database with greater capabilities agconnect® more than delivered on these requests and were excited to see what the future holds for this partnership the app can be found on both the apple app store® and google play store® only farm program certified evaluators/trainers have account credentials to utilize the app and submit evaluations for questions or inquiries about the national dairy farm program please contact dairyfarm@nmpforg for questions or inquiries about the dairy farm mobile app please contact farm-help@tamuedu headquartered in college station texas iiad was founded in 2004 as a department of homeland security (dhs) science and technology center of excellence the institute focuses on research education and outreach to prevent detect mitigate and recover from transboundary emerging and/or zoonotic diseases which may be introduced intentionally or through natural processes in 2014 iiad was recognized by the world organization for animal health (oie) as a collaborating centre in the specialty of biological threat reduction iiad is the only centre of this kind in oies americas region and the only oie collaborating centre within the texas a&m university system for more information visit iiadtamuedu