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Farm-Scape, Episode 2274

The Saskatchewan Pork Development Board has assumed responsibility for the operation and management of the Pork Interpretive Gallery located at the Prairie Swine Centre.

Built in the attic space of the Prairie Swine Centre's 600 sow farrow to finish research barn at Elstow, the Pork Interpretive Gallery is designed to allow visitors a first hand look at what goes on in a modern swine operation.

To maintain biosecutity, the gallery has its own separate entrance and its own ventilation system independent of the research barn.

Sask Pork general Manager Neil Ketilson explains fund raising for the project and its initial three years of operation was coordinated by the Prairie Swine Centre and now the responsibility of continuing its operation has been turned over to the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board.

"As part of the original three year mandate of the project there was a three year operating line that went with that fund raising campaign.

The three years is now up and we are looking for creative ways of making sure the gallery kept and was operated in the fashion that the industry would like to see it in.

So the board of directors of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board thought it was quite important that our organization now take the mandate of the gallery and our public information and our ag education program and put it within our work area to make sure that we use the gallery so that the public school children and people of influence can use it to make sure that they understand the basics about the hog industry in Saskatchewan."

Ketilson notes the operation of the Pork Interpretive Gallery fits more directly with Sask Pork's mandate to educate the public about Saskatchewan's pork industry and taking over its operation will allow the Prairie Swine Centre to focus on its mandate which is to conduct scientific research in the areas of nutrition, engineering and animal behavior.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.