New Online Training Platform Allows Swine Operations to Manage, Coordinate and Track Swine Barn Worker Training

A recently introduced online training platform for swine barn workers is allowing farms to manage, coordinate and track their training programs. Among  the topics that will be discussed as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2025, set for November 4th and 5th in Saskatoon, is "the PigLEARN training platform."

Mark Fynn, the Training Resources Coordinator with the Canadian Pork Council, says the platform was created to assist farms in managing the training of barn workers and was officially launched in March of this year.

Quote-Mark Fynn-Canadian Pork Council:

The PigLEARN training platform is an online training platform. Some people call it a learning management system that basically hosts training content. Canadian Pork Council has developed 86 different training modules as we currently stand and we're about to deliver another ten training modules as well to host on the platform.

The platform hosts that material and allows people to get a user account, log in, participate in that training, learn some best management practices as advised by a number of producers and other swine sector experts and it also allows companies, if they want to, to administer their own groups of users and even upload their own training content to the platform.So, the PigLEARN training platform has a robust use case whether you're an individual who just wants to go on and look at the CPC training modules that have been uploaded or if your company is actively participating and doing  their own stuff on the training platform.

When we look at the Canadian Pork Council training modules that are up there, we call it the PigLEARN catalogue, we cover topics from biosecurity to preparing pigs for transport to how to manage a sow barn, group sow housing, pig handling.There's a number of different topics that are covered on there and it's really equipping our new workers with a strong foundation as they go into the barn.

Fynn says the platform allows companies to administer their own training programs, schedule learning, track the progress of learning and demonstrate that training has been provided. He encourages anyone interested in the PigLEARN training platform to contact their provincial pork organization.