The chair of Manitoba Pork Council says the positive response of the general public to the Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre shows the investment in its development was money well spent.
The Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre, located at the University of Manitoba’s Glenlea Research Station, home to the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment, officially opened in September 2011 and last month hosted its ten thousandth visitor.
Karl Kynoch, the chair of Manitoba Pork Council, one of the main funders of the eight thousand square foot facility, explains over the past number of years a lot of family farms have disappeared and the city people have lost the opportunity to get out to the farm and interact so pork producers felt it was important to get a facility built that people could visit and actually learn what’s done on the farm.
I had the opportunity to tour the facility and what’s really unique about it is it takes you through the whole cycle.
You go through the facility and you’re shown how the grains are grown and how the manures are used for fertilizer to grow the crop.
Then they actually go through it and you see how the grains are turned into feed that animals can use, they’re ground up for livestock.
You actually also get to see into farrowing rooms.
You actually see sows there having baby pigs right in that room.
If you’re very fortunate you’ll see a sow having pigs that day.
You’ll see how the animals are kept, sometimes you’ll see the workers in the barn interacting with them and you’ll see the life cycle of the pig.
You basically take the complete cycle and it ends up being food in the stores to buy.
It’s a real experience for people to be able to go out there and see exactly how the food that’s sitting in the shelves in the Superstores and the Walmarts and that, just how that food is raised and all of the processes it has to go through.
Kynoch says it’s exciting to see that the centre has already hosted its 10 thousandth visitor.
He notes some of these visitors are repeats and many of these people are now bringing their friends and encouraging others to visit so the facility is achieving its goals.
