Farm-Scape, Episode 2026

Internationally recognized swine industry researcher Dr. Frank Aherne will be honored this week as part of the 35th annual edition of the Banff Pork Seminar, which kicks off this evening.

As part of this year's Banff Pork Seminar officials of the University of Alberta and the Banff Pork Seminar will unveil the new Frank Aherne Memorial Award.

The award, which was created in honor of Dr. Frank Aherne who passed away last month, will be presented annually to a University of Alberta undergraduate student in the field of animal science.

Alberta Pig Company Chair Brian Pekins, who worked with Dr. Aherne over the past ten years, says the award demonstrates the respect the industry and the educational community had for this man.

"Frank Aherne had a remarkable ability to communicate with farmers and those of us in the industry know that but he also was a teacher, a professor, a researcher at the university and related with students in a very special way.

This is one of the reasons we wanted to, jointly with the university, select an undergraduate award and that will be going out to an undergraduate student in animal science.

Over the time when Dr. Aherne was a professor at the university he was selected a number of times by the students and given an award as the outstanding teacher for that year and it shows very well the relationship that he had with the undergraduate students."

In addition to the new Frank Aherne Memorial Award Dr. Aherne is also remembered through the F.X. Aherne Awards for innovative pork production which are presented annually in conjunction with the Banff Pork Seminar.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.