Farm-Scape, Episode 1622

Officials of the Prairie Swine Centre are hoping to attract between 150 and 300 visitors to the Pork Interpretive Gallery's first anniversary open house tomorrow.

The Pork Interpretive Gallery is housed in the attic space of the Prairie Swine Centre's research barn at Elstow, Saskatchewan and was officially opened one year ago.

Information Services Manager Lee Whittington says the gallery was designed to provide an inside view of what the pork industry is all about without the risk of compromising the facility's biosecurity protocols.

"The important thing that separates the Pork Interpretive Gallery from a regular pig barn is that we changed the attic space so that people can go up into the attic space without having to shower in.

If they were to go into the barn, biosecurity procedures would require them to shower in and change clothes.

What we've done is we've sealed off an airspace up in the attic and provided windows down into the facility.

The industry is quite excited about providing what we would call transparency to the industry. Because of the way pork buildings are structured and because of our biosecurity concerns it's virtually impossible for the casual visitor to get into a pig barn.

That's where the Pork Interpretive Gallery comes in. It was designed right into the construction of the new 600 sow Elstow research facility and it allows the visitor to see virtually every aspect of modern pork production from an overhead gallery."

Whittington says about 18 hundred people have been through the gallery since March of last year. He says, while tomorrow's open house targets the general public, the gallery was designed specifically to interest school aged children, primarily grades six to ten.

However, he says, seniors groups, university students, Four-H clubs and industry people have taken also taken tours.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.