By Bruce Cochrane
The Manager of Consumer Marketing and Community Relations Programs with Manitoba Pork says the ten day Red River Exhibition offers an excellent opportunity for the pork industry to communicate directly with the public.
The 2014 Red River Exhibition kicks off Friday at Red River Exhibition Park in Winnipeg.
Susan Riese, the Manager of Consumer Marketing and Community Relations Programs with Manitoba Pork, says this year's pork display, part of the exhibition's "Touch the Farm Exhibit," has been expanded and moved into a new building, it has been remained "Pig Tales" and is the story of pork production in Manitoba.
Susan Riese-Manitoba Pork:
It's different not just in the sense that it's bigger but we're also covering a lot more information in terms of the various stages of production, how producers care for their animals which is a popular area of interest for today's consumers and how we protect our animals from disease, especially in light of PEDv and other diseases that are out there as well as information about where all the manure goes on the farm and how pigs are transported.
Unfortunately this year we won't have live animals in our exhibit.
Our board, in light of PEDv decided that it was too high of a risk to take to have live animals here so we've compensated by trying to incorporate a number of other hands on activities where people, especially kids, can learn about our industry.
For example we've got an ultrasound activity where kids can see if the sow is pregnant or not, we've got a coloring area, we've got a manure wall that is interactive and shows exactly how the manure goes from the farm to the field, so lots of different things.
Riese says we can't have people going in and out of barns at will so any time we have a chance to showcase pork production through events such as the Red River Ex it's a positive and it dispels a lot of the myths that are out there about pork production in Manitoba.
Source: Farmscape