A first of its kind program, the Humane Handling Institute, will provide comprehensive hands-on training for current meat industry workers in humane pre-slaughter handling, transport, stunning, and equipment maintenance. Kurt Vogel, Humane Handling Institute Director, shares an update into the timeline of where the institute is at, what they are working on, and their new pilot program.
They are in an ordering phase where they’re ordering a lot of tools to teach maintenance and repair of stunning equipment. These will be put into six different rolling cart stations, so they can have a set of tools in each.
“Additionally, we have ordered model animal heads such as cattle, sheep and pig, that are going to be used to train captive bolt stunning and euthanasia,” says Ashlynn Kirk, Humane Handling Institute program manager.
Vogel says they have been getting flooded with emails of interest in the institute which is set to roll out in the fall of 2023.
“From the student perspective here at UW-River Falls, this has opened up some unique opportunities, ” Vogel adds. “As an example, we’re excited to use the training models for captive bolt stunning with our students in our meat and meat products courses where these students will actually get the opportunity to use captive bolt tools and learn how they work, how to maintain them, and use them efficiently and humanely.”
Currently, Vogel and his team are working on connecting the Humane Handling Institute to high schools through a ten day meat science curriculum.
“There are four modules that make up the ten days, each with its own presentation, different activities that go along with it and forms of assessment, ” explains Hannah Oleson, graduate student and content developer for the high school meat science curriculum. “There’s an opportunity in the third module for students to complete a hands-on lab, for both making a fresh bratwurst, and then making a whole muscle and restructured jerky.”
There will be 100 laboratory kits available through a grant program that closes May 1, 2023.
These kits will be available to Wisconsin agricultural education programs and they include an eight pound meat grinder, five pound vertical sausage stuffer, a dehydrator, casing to do the fresh bratwurst lab, seasoning to do both the jerky and bratwurst labs, knives, steel, cut resistant gloves, hairnets and disposable aprons.
The high school meat science curriculum is being piloted by fifteen schools right now across the state with hopes to get feedback and then make improvements.
“We’re getting ready to offer the first of our five workshops that we’ll be developing for the Humane Handling Institute and so those who are interested in what we’re doing can look forward to additional workshops coming online over the course of the next year or so,” says Vogel.
Leave a Reply