The chair of Manitoba Pork Council says activities offered by the University of Manitoba’s Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre have gone a long way toward dispelling the myths that surround the production of our food.
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 in July hosted its ten thousandth visitor.
The eight thousand square foot facility features a range of interactive displays designed to tell the story of how our food is produced from the farm to our plates.
Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch explains over the years, as the number of family farms has dwindled, people in our cities have lost the opportunity to interact with farmers.
Many years ago, when there was a lot of farmers around, there was a lot of people in the city had a connection to the farms.
They would go out to the farms on the weekend and they would see what’s going on.
It could be their uncle, it could be their parents, they could see how these animals were being raised and we’ve lost that disconnect and when we lose the disconnect we get a lot of controversy.
The public gets concerned about animal welfare, there’s myths out there, how their food is raised, all these types of things and when you can bring the public into a facility like that you actually show them how the food is being raised, you show them how the animals are being handled, you get to show them how the workers work with them on a daily basis and this type of thing and how clean the facilities are.
What it does is actually hopefully it will connect the people in the city back to the farm life and reassure them that the farmers are doing the good things on animal welfare, just taking care of the animals and raising their food just the way that they used to see it when there was a lot more connection to the farms.
Kynoch hopes to see even larger numbers of people touring the facility as awareness builds.
He says the 10 thousand visitor milestone is exciting and he’s looking forward to the day the centre hosts its 100 thousandth visitor.
