Cargo Chat: Speed and savings make the case for canine detection

It is common for canines to assist TSA agents with passenger airport security, but canines can also lend their talents — and noses — to cargo operations. [caption id="attachment_57142460" align="alignright" width="300"] Eric Hare[/caption] Alabama-based canine detection company Global K9 Protection Group uses canines’ heightened sense of smell to screen cargo in 85% less time than other methods, such as X-ray machines. A push for increasing canine detection in cargo warehouses was spurred by changes to the International Civil Aviation Organization ’s (ICAO) screening standards in 2021, Air Cargo Next previously reported . Two years later, Global K9 Protection Group became the first company to be TSA-certified to provide certified cargo screening with canines. The company uses dogs to screen cargo for potential hazards, including lithium batteries , and has facilities in Alaska, Hawaii and Alabama. Taking advantage of the industry’s shift to digitalization, Global K9 produces cargo screening records through AI-generated digital documents as it works with airlines, forwarders and ground handlers to streamline screening and safety of transports, Chief Executive Eric Hare told Air Cargo Next . The company contracts with Lufthansa , United Airlines , Qatar Airways Cargo and Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Ltd. (Hactl) among other carriers. Hare sat down with Air Cargo Next to discuss the benefits of canine cargo screening. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. Air Cargo Next : What is the benefit of canines screening cargo? Eric Hare : Speed, time and savings. So, if you think about it, the canine can screen a pallet in 5 seconds. … Let’s say the pallet has 5,050 boxes. It takes time [for a machine] to put it on an X-ray, put it through the X-ray, move it, and you have to do that for each pallet. The canine is about 85% faster, safer and more efficient. Air Cargo Next : Why are dogs better at screening cargo than humans or other machines? EH : The government did a study in 2006 that said that dogs’ olfactory is better than any machine we could ever have. If you are training a dog, it does not make a mistake. And if you are [processing cargo using] X-ray or another one of the other processes that you [screen] cargo by, it’s usually the person that is making a mistake or they misread something. So, the canine is just a better detection tool. [They are] what we call the “four-legged biosensors.” And as long as they are properly selected, properly trained and maintained, they are just like a piece of equipment. Air Cargo Next : What technologies support canine detection for screening that Global K9 Protection Group uses or plans to use? EH: We have a technology platform that can pull IATA data from air waybills or from barcode scanning . So, we are pushing our new technology into the system. Everything our teams do, they record everything. And then we use artificial intelligence, computer vision and an optical character reader to [digitize the file]. So, they take any paper, and they put it in front of the camera, and it digitizes everything on it and makes a digital folder with the video documents and everything. TSA requires us to video everything on screen. So, this is all in that digital folder. And then when TSA wants a check on an air waybill ... and we want to check on this air waybill or this training day with a handler, what we do is we take it and we segment it out of the system and into a TSA file because each folder is secure and no one could get into it. So, we have to move it to authorize folders for people to view it. So, we transmit all our data that way to the TSA.

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