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Put yourselves in their shoes

For Cactus Family Farms, today’s farm employee stems from one of two main groups. The first being the local employees near their headquarters in Osceola, Iowa. According to HR Specialist Heather Vaughn, 80% of those local applicants are Hispanic. They often have little formal education or prior experience with pigs and sometimes speak traditional indigenous languages as well as Spanish.

The other side of that coin is a completely different pool of applicants. Through the North American Free Trade Agreement, they also have the option to hire employees with a TN visa. For this specific visa, applicants must either be from Canada or Mexico, however Vaughn says that the agriculture industry primarily relies on Mexican candidates.

Another specification to the TN visa is that they have to have some level of an advanced degree.

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Season 7, Episode 5: Understanding Hog Trailer Contamination and Re-Contamination

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Biosecurity and foreign animal disease preparedness extends beyond the farm. This episode looks at the risk of contamination on hog trailers as pigs move from different parts of the state to harvest plants.

Dr. Cesar Corzo, associate professor at the University of Minnesota and leman chair for swine health and productivity, and Lucas Ferreira, research assistant and PhD student at the university, discuss how their trailer research got started, how trailers can be exposed to pathogens and where contamination can occur during the transportation process. They also discuss trailer washing, PPE and opportunities to break the chain of contamination and strengthen transportation biosecurity.