Farmscape for May 24, 2012   (Episode 4156)

An animal science professor with Colorado State University is encouraging livestock producers to make use of youtube to show the public what happens day to day on their farms.

The topic, "Animal Welfare: The Right Thing to Do," was the focus of a public presentation yesterday in Brandon.

Dr. Temple Grandin, a professor Livestock Handling and Behavior with Colorado State University, the author of several books on animal handling and stockmanship and autism and the subject of the HBO documentary movie, Temple Grandin, observes, while the livestock industry has made tremendous strides in improving animal handling and welfare, the public's awareness of agriculture is limited.

Clip-Dr. Temple Grandin-Colorado State University:
A lot of the public today in the cities is totally separated from the farm and there's been a lot of improvements made in agriculture and the public's not aware about it.

I'm very frustrated about that because things are so much better compared to the 80s and the early 90s.

There's just no comparison.

In the last ten years there's been so much more interest in low stress handling, people are doing low stress handling clinics.

It's improved greatly.

The slaughter plants have greatly improved compared to what they were ten years ago.

The aggies have got to get out and communicate with the public and one of the ways to do that is to put things up on youtube, just regular things.

I find the public is curious about the everyday regular things, feeding cattle, taking care of cows, handling pigs, how you mix feed.

Things that are just chores to the farmer are really interesting to the public.

Dr. Grandin says the HBO movie which profiles her life and work has helped build the public's awareness of agriculture and she's received a great deal of positive feedback.

She notes there's a lot of kids who might be kind of quirky and different, they may be labelled autistic or dyslexic, they've got ADHD, they've got aspergers and the movie is motivating them and showing them they can succeed and that's really a good thing.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council