The RABDF Prince Philip Award made for the most practical, relevant and best presented stand holder at the Dairy Event and Livestock Show 2008 attracted a record number of 23 entries, from which12 were short listed.
Dairy hygiene supplier, Ecolab, of Swindon has been presented with the RABDF Prince Philip Award 2008 by His Royal Highness at Buckingham Palace. The honour was made to the company for the most practical, relevant and best presented technical exhibit at this year’s Dairy Event and Livestock Show.
The judges made their decision on the company’s newly launched Lactivate-System, a milking equipment cleaning programme that is claimed to bring combined annual savings of £1,000 in energy and water for a 200 cow herd. “We are delighted and honoured to receive this top award,” explains Ecolab’s Mark Williams. “After five years of R&D, it’s a great achievement to reach a point where the Lactivate-System is ready to market and justifies the time, skills and funding invested in a sector where there has been little, if any, innovation for the last three decades.”
The Lactivate-System is based on the activation of Lactoperoxidase, an enzyme found naturally present in milk and which is left in the equipment after milking. Since only 1% to 5% of milk is necessary for the system to work, the pre-rinse phase can be eliminated enabling one third of water used for cleaning the milking equipment to be saved, along with the energy to heat and run
this pre-rinsing water. In addition, the amount of dirty water running in to the farm’s slurry storage is reduced by one third, together with energy, time, labour and land area required for spreading.
A Certificate of Merit was made to milking equipment supplier, Vaccar, of Coleford Gloucestershire who launched at the event, Clusterflush, an individual cluster sanitisation system designed to help eliminate cross contamination and infection between cows and thereby stop mastitis spreading within the herd via milking equipment.
RABDF’s chief executive, Nick Everington says: “As organiser of the Dairy Event and Livestock Show, we are focused on communicating to farmers the benefits of best practice and technology transfer which will help towards improving their herd’s overall efficiency and introduce cost benefits. We are pleased to reward those exhibitors who excel in technical innovation and presentation, and Ecolab’s Lactivate-System proved to be an excellent example.” He adds: “RABDF will once again be staging the award at the Dairy Event and Livestock Show 2009 on 16 and 17 September and we look forward to another set of high caliber entries.”