Farmscape Jun/05 ... New biosecure educational centres being constructed across the prairies are giving the general public an unprecedented opportunity to see first hand, the modern high health procedures and systems that are used to raise swine in Canada.

Disease Concerns Force Restricted Access to Swine Barns
For years, as part of the effort to minimize the risk of disease infection, the vast majority of Canadian swine barns have been strictly off limits to anyone other than the producers themselves, their employees and those people delivering goods or providing services to the barn. Those who are authorized to enter these facilities adhere to strict biosecurity protocols designed to further reduce the risk of disease, including showering and changing clothes, with special attention paid to footwear, upon entering the barn and again upon leaving. Such protocols have made it very difficult for members of the general public, and even other farmers, to get a first hand look at what modern swine production is all about.

Two Prairie Centres Currently Operational and One Planned
There are currently two such western Canadian educational centres, one located at the Prairie Swine Centre's Elstow, Saskatchewan research barn and one on the University of Alberta's south campus, in the heart of Edmonton's south side. A third is scheduled to open next year as part of the University of Manitoba's National Centre for Livestock and the Environment (NCLE).

Pork Interpretive Gallery Opens Window on Prairie Swine Centre Research
The Pork Interpretive Gallery, originally named the Pork Industry Interpretive Centre, was constructed in the attic space of the Prairie Swine Centre's research barn at Elstow, about 30 miles east of Saskatoon. The gallery, which is sealed off from the rooms below, utilizes its own independent ventilation system to ensure the potential transmission of disease is minimized.

Huge picture windows allow visitors to peer directly into the rooms below in which the pigs are born and grown to market weight and where scientists study everything from how nutrition affects their health and performance, to how potentially dangerous manure gases like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia can be reduced.

Deborah Ehmann, the Assistant Manager of the Pork Interpretive Gallery, estimates 25,000 people have passed through its displays since the doors were officially opened in October 2003.

“About 50 percent of the people who come through the gallery are students. They're coming through the school systems, children from grades five to ten usually.”

She points out, “29 percent, though, are people from the pork industry. We have sales representatives, producers, Hutterites. We have international visitors as well. People from Spain and China, have been very interested in how the Canadian producers look after their animals. Generally there’s many people who have been working in the pork industry but have never had the opportunity actually go through one of the barns because of the biosecurity.”

“It gives other people an opportunity to take a look at the operations as well, besides children. There are people in communities that have hog operations in their community and have never had the chance to go through so it helps deal with some of the curiosity around the hog operations.”

Pig Science Centre Allows Visitors to View Research at the University of Alberta
The Pig Science Centre is a stand alone component of the University of Alberta's Swine Research Technology Centre and is located on the University's South Campus in the heart of Edmonton's south side. It was developed to increase the understanding of the ways in which Alberta's pork industry is proactive in its approach to production practices, animal care, environmental sustainability, food safety and product quality.

Officially opened in September of 2003, the centre is attached to the swine unit with viewing windows into the barn.

Alberta Pork Industry Service Coordinator Kim Williams says, “It was designed primarily for elementary school children, kindergarten to grade six. There are dynamic and interactive displays within the centre to teach the children about the hog industry and to show them what agriculture is all about.”

Williams estimates approximately two thousand people have come through the centre since its opening. “This has included our regular tour groups of children, teachers as well as parents. There have been 4-H groups, English as a second language groups, university students as well as university students parents. There’s also been producers and their families.”

“The response to the centre has been very favourable,” Williams says. “Parents love the centre, how it teaches children in a fun interactive way. They enjoy the animals. They love seeing the animals live and the piglets playing around.”

Public Education Centre of Excellence Planned for Glenlea, Manitoba
Development of the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment is now underway at the University of Manitoba's Glenlea Research Farm. Construction plans include the creation of both a research and public education centre of excellence for sustainable agricultural production systems.

The National Centre for Livestock and the Environment is designed for multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary research at a whole farm level and will consist of facilities for farrow to finish swine research, including conventional and group housing, feedlot cattle research, including four isolated pens, a feed mill, laboratory facilities and crop production sites at Glenlea and Carman.

The educational component, being developed under the working name “Glenlea Farm Education Centre” will include the livestock component, a food processing and retail component and interactive displays related to the land including soils and crops displays.

The head of the University’s Animal Science Department, Dr. Karin Wittenberg says, “The education centre is a separate entity using the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment as its backdrop. It’s an ideal way of highlighting how research can develop new technologies, bring new understanding of science into sustainable safe food production.”

Construction is underway now and it’s anticipated the feed mill will be completed this summer and the swine facilities will be completed this fall. Development of the education centre is planned to start in 2006.

U of M Research to Adopt Whole Farm Approach
Dr. Wittenberg says, once complete, the national centre will look at both intensive livestock production systems and land or resource management cropping production system.

“It’s designed to find solutions to some of the key issues facing intensive animal agriculture, issues around environmental stewardship, around food safety and the movement of micro organisms in the environment that may have a consequence to plant, animal or human health and, to have as part of its focus, animal health and welfare.”

She points out the centre’s focus will be on sustainable intensive livestock production systems. “It has the infrastructure that allows us to bring medical microbiologists, environmental microbiologists as well as microbiologists involved in food production together with food safety experts, agriculture production experts and engineers to focus on these key areas that we think are going to become critical to future growth and success of the intensive animal agriculture industry in Canada.”

Education Considered Key to Attracting Skilled Workers
The CEO of Humboldt-based Big Sky Farms believes these types of educational opportunities will play an important role in attracting the young people that will be needed to allow the swine industry to grow.

Florian Possberg says making a swine facility accessible to busloads of school aged children is an important step toward reconnecting future consumers and decision makers to the livestock industry. “We know that in order to continue to grow our industry it’s necessary to attract young people and perhaps even non-traditional agriculture people into the hog industry. We’ve got a real problem in the hog industry in that our production normally happens behind closed doors in biosecure facilities.”

Possberg say that, while biosecurity has been a positive step for the whole industry in protecting the health and welfare of animals, it has caused a disconnect between farmers and the general public, in particular young people, but these biosecure educational facilities speak directly to that issue. “They make it accessible to the general public and also act as a tool that young people can get updated in what happens in hog barns and we think this is an important step for us.” - Staff Farmscape.Ca.