Technological Advances in Cattle Welfare: An Analysis of Patent Families

ABSTRACT The research carried out intended to analyze the panorama of patents related to welfare in cattle. To this end, a search was carried out on the worldwide Questel Orbit patent registration database oriented toward the existence of terms associated with welfare in cattle in the documents of patent families. The investigation corresponded to the period from the beginning of the registrations in 1967 until August 2019. In this way, an initial portfolio was created of 272 registrations. Of these, 77 documents were related to cattle, with direct or indirect interventions in the optimization of the welfare. Data analysis took place in a quantitative way and through the classification of patent families in seven categories: nutrition, health, management, genetics, infrastructure​/facilities, physiological and behavioral indicators, and traceability​/certification. The largest number of patent families corresponded to the areas of rural facilities, animal nutrition, health, and new physiological and behavioral indicators, totaling 73%. The temporal distribution of these records shows that the interest of researchers in promoting technological innovations focused on well-being began in 1995, with expressiveness from 2013. It should also be noted that the largest registration of patent families comes from China (51%), followed by European countries, which account for 23%, and the United States (19%), while Brazil represents only 6% of the total documents. Despite the recent patent registrations related to cattle, there has been an increase in recent years, denoting the growth of efforts for technological innovation of this productive chain regarding animal welfare.