If its first year of operation is any indication, The Prairie Swine Centre’s Pork Interpretive Gallery (P.I.G.) is well on its way to building a well-deserved reputation as a valuable teaching tool for Saskatchewan educators. Located at the Prairie Swine Centre’s Elstow Research Facility, a 600-sow farrow-to-finish hog operation, the Pork Interpretive Gallery allows tour participants unprecedented access to an intensive hog operation. This access is made available through a unique viewing gallery that ‘bypasses’ biosecurity concerns at the barn.

In fact biosecurity is not compromised, but rather, the viewing gallery is accessed through a separate, outside entrance that leads up a flight of stairs to what would normally be the barn’s attic. But thanks to a stroke of genius and a few structural modifications, the attic became a segregated viewing gallery, aptly known as the P.I.G.
Geared towards students from the Grade 5 to Grade 9 level, the tour has some very eye-catching and interactive signage to captivate the students’ attention, and is guided by knowledgeable and friendly interpreters.

“Hats off to the interpreters, they were amazing,” says Leslie Sichello, a Grade 5 teacher at Silverwood Heights Elementary School in Saskatoon. “They were so patient and they provided all of the answers that the kids wanted to know. They were able to anticipate what kids of things would really capture a Grade 5’s brain.”
Kandace Chopty, a Grade 5 teacher at Watrous Elementary School was so impressed with her first visit to P.I.G., she made a return trip this past school year. “The kids learned some new things about the pork industry,” Chopty says. “Even though they are rural children, there was still stuff there that they learned.”

“I guess this year the highlight was of course we saw the pigs being born. They were right there, noses pressed to the glass, observing it,” she chuckles. “Of course they didn’t want to leave that area, that was by far the highlight of the day.”

Regardless if the touring students come from an urban or rural setting, the P.I.G. tour seems to provide a valuable learning experience for any and all students. “None of our students were from a farm background so it was very new to them,” said Cliff Adelman, an Agriculture 20 teacher at Lutheran Collegiate Bible Institute (LCBI) in Outlook. “They loved it,” “It very much changed their perception,” he adds. “They now know when they eat pork what kind of a place it comes from.”

“A student from Toronto thanked me especially for it, he said ‘I know where my food comes from now, I never really thought about it before.’ So it’s excellent.” Despite targeting its message largely to grade school students, the P.I.G. tour is also adaptable enough to be beneficial to university veterinary medical students, says U of S vet med professor Joe Stookey. “All of the responses back from the students was excellent,” says Stookey, who took out 70 second-year veterinary students as part of their introduction to swine production. “And in fact I’ve had requests from other years wanting to do the same thing. Some classes felt they missed out on it.” “And the interpreters were great,” Stookey adds, concurring with Sichello’s earlier comments. “We had some pretty sophisticated questions, I would guess compared to grade school or high school questions, and there wasn’t anything that went unanswered.”
Not only is the actual tour a delight for teachers, but the P.I.G. is beneficial to teachers even before the field trip begins, says Sichello.

“The documents that they sent out ahead of time that had everything connected to curricular objectives was very well planned as well,” she says. “They knew exactly what this would connect to in health and lifestyles.”
“So the kids were prepared and they just loved it,” Sichello says, adding that the P.I.G. tour was her best field trip of the year. “It was really good.” For more information on or to book your tour with the Pork Interpretive Gallery, please call P.I.G. Tour manager, Deb Ehmann-PIG-TOUR (1-866-744-8687), or visit www.PIGTour.ca