Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1331

Officials of the Prairie Swine Centre are putting the final touches on the educational materials that will be used when the new Pork Industry Interpretive Centre begins its fall school tours.

The one million dollar Pork Industry Interpretive Centre is located in the attic space of the Prairie Swine Centre's research barn at Elstow, Saskatchewan. Twelve windows that look into the barn are accompanied by signs which describe what goes on in each room.

Interactive displays outline things like the weight of the pigs, what they eat, how much they and what comes out the other end.

Information Services Manager Lee Whittington says the test tours have allowed officials to fine tune the types of messages visitors will be interested in.

"Interesting and pertinent are two really important qualities. Because we have a target audience of grades six to ten, our signage is all targeted to that in terms of the type of language used etceteras.

That's a common group that Disney would use or the Space Centre would use etceteras. We chose that same target group to build our signage around but we have tried tours from kindergarten, grade five, right through to a seniors group as well as a group of teachers and various other groups to look at how their questions change and whether or not we have the kind of answers that they're looking for.

This spring what we've been doing is inviting various school groups as well as others to come and tour the operation and it's allowed us to develop the types of messages they're interested in and want to hear about and to help us evaluate, has the signage struck home in terms of delivering the key messages about the industry and how do people react to it."

Whittington says the response of those taking part in the test tours has been overwhelmingly positive.

He says, in many cases, visitors have never been inside a modern pig barn and their retention of information has been excellent.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.