Farm-Scape, Episode 1658

Officials of the Prairie Swine Centre report last month's drive to complete a one million dollar fund raising effort to cover the costs of the Pork Interpretive Gallery has been a tremendous success.

The effort to raise one million dollars to build and operate a pork interpretive gallery in the attic space of the Prairie Swine Centre's Elstow, Saskatchewan research barn began two years ago.

As part of the drive to raise the final 20 thousand dollars, Pig Improvement Canada agreed to match dollar for dollar, up to 20 thousand dollars, all donations collected in November.

Information Services Manager Lee Whittington says industry responded once again.

"Industry support has been nothing short of phenomenal. It has consistently been more than 50 percent of all the dollars that we've raised.

This most recent campaign will certainly put the industry share well over 50 percent of the total funding. I think the pork industry really enjoys the purpose and the focus of the gallery because it brings transparency to the industry.

The industry is very proud of what it does, whether it be in their manure management or their animal handling or just in their gains in productivity over the last 25 years.

The industry is saying the best way to tell that message is to get people into a barn.

Short of showering in and walking in amongst the pigs, the Pork Interpretive Gallery serves the purpose of getting people in the barn in a fashion that allows them to get full access to the barn without all of the complications of biosecurity controls such as showing in."

Whittington says, in addition to paying the capital costs of constructing the gallery, the one million dollars raised will also cover the balance of the first two years of operating expenses.

He says fund raising for future operation of the gallery is now underway.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.