By Galya Yemini

Startup's capsule SMSs data on cow diagnostics between mad cow disease and avian flu, it's not easy being a farmer these days.

A young startup company from the Golan Heights is trying to alleviate the headaches. Veterix has developed an electronic capsule that a cow swallows. The capsule analyzes certain physiological parameters, and sends a wireless transmission of the data on the animal's health to a monitoring and control unit. If the cow is sick or suffering from a specific problem, the system immediately sends an SMS to the farmer's cellular telephone.
Veterix is operating in the framework of the Meytag High Tech Ventures technological incubator, owned by Capital Point, a private investment company. The startup has raised thus far about $1 million from private investors and the chief scientist at the Industry, Trade and Employment Ministry. It also is participating in a joint project with Sweden with the full cooperation of the Agriculture Ministry.
Veterix founder Eliav Tahar, 35, left the corridors of politics and marketing and advertising offices in Tel Aviv in favor of the muddy fields of dairy farms in Israel's north. Tahar studied economics, worked as a political marketing consultant, and then tried his hand at high-tech during the bubble years, retraining as a digital hardware engineer and working at a few startups, where he caught the entrepreneuring bug. The idea for Veterix came to him completely by chance. "My dog was in a traffic accident in 2003, and I was very worried about his health during the recuperation process," Tahar recalls. "I decided there should be a relatively inexpensive diagnostic tool for monitoring animals." At first, Tahar thought of a collar that would monitor the dog's pulse, respiration rate and body temperature, and then, after analyzing the data's significance, transmit it to the owner.

Neither the capsule nor the cows were part of his original plan. After speaking with several veterinarians, Tahar met with Dr. Benny Sharir, a veterinarian in the Upper Galilee. Sharir referred him to two scientists at the Volcani Institute - Dr. Yoav Aharoni and Dr. Arieh Brosh - who said the idea would be good for cows, too. A cow's health has a great bearing on her milk production, and therefore, on a farmer's economic situation. "Medical research already has proved a connection between heart rate and metabolic or pathological conditions among animals that chew their cud," Tahar says. While touring dairy farms in the Galilee, he discovered that farmers were giving cows a type of magnet to swallow. The magnet entered the cows' second stomach, and attracted any bits of metal the cows accidentally swallowed, thereby preventing harm to their internal organs. "I decided to follow that idea, but rather than a collar, I decided to use an electronic capsule that the cows would swallow. The capsule would be equipped with sensors and a transmitter," he says.
At that point, Tahar brought in Mike Nathanson, a digital signal processing engineer with a degree in biomedical engineering. "The capsule remains in the cow's stomach throughout her life, and does not burden her the way a collar would," Tahar says. The transmitted data, which is analyzed by a mechanism in the capsule, includes heart and respiration rate, body temperature, and intestinal activity. "Only the results are transmitted," Tahar says. "We registered a patent on the monitoring and processing of the information inside the capsule. A farmer can see which cows are not eating properly, and if one of them is sick."

Veterix registered as a company in 2004, and Tahar conducted most of his clinical trials at the experimental dairy barns run by the Agriculture Ministry and the Volcani Institute at Beit Dagan. Veterix is currently at a critical stage - it has completed the laboratory trial stage, and now is planning field trials at commercial Israeli dairy barns. "The dairy industry is one of the largest and oldest industries in the world," Tahar says. "An Israeli cow produces an average of 12,000 liters of milk annually, while cows in non-industrialized settings naturally produce just 1,500 liters a year. Farmers today are constantly looking for the balance between producing more milk, and maintaining the cow's health and welfare. If a cow is pressured into producing more and more, she will get sick and not produce at all. That's where we come in." Tahar likens the capsule's signal to a warning light that a car is low on oil in its engine. Veterix is testing its product in a joint project with DeLaval, a large Swedish company that makes equipment for the cattle industry. If the trials are successful, DeLaval will market and distribute Veterix's products worldwide. Tahar would like to raise $1.5-2 million from private investors to expand the field trials, and see if the technology will prove itself.