The New and Improved Pork Quality Assurance Training
posted on Monday, March 26, 2018
“I never thought I would hear so much laughter coming from a PQA training,” said Dan Dean, director of sow production for Iowa Select Farms. “Our caretakers are having fun, and they are taking a tremendous amount of ownership in understanding their role in producing safe pork.”
Dan’s talking about the pig costumes, props and brand new format for Pork Quality Assurance (PQA) Plus training, an annual training and certification program developed by the National Pork Board. Initially designed to help pig farmers learn best practices to promote food safety, PQA has expanded and improved over the years based on scientific advancements and industry experts.
“The previous way we certified was getting a bit…bland,” admitted Kailey Einspahr, a Production Well-Being (PWB) Specialist. “We wanted the training to be more than us presenting slides for two hours—we knew we could do better to make the program engaging and interactive, while still covering all of the important information.”
When new employees start their jobs they receive PQA Plus certification on day three, and then all 1,800 employees and contractors are annually re-certified at one of 24 regional training meetings held February-April.
This year, the PWB team planned a PQA “Pig Party,” where the tables on training were turned. Instead of the specialists presenting the entire slide deck, caretakers led the sessions while trainers facilitated the group activities and a Pig Jeopardy Challenge.
“The new curriculum was created using the Good Production Practices covered in the existing PQA program,” explained Cassandra Jass, director of PWB. “But we also incorporated Iowa Select’s internal policies and SOPs that follow the main PQA points.”
To prepare for PQA sessions, the PWB team put together folders with information in the areas of biosecurity, daily observations, pig handling, euthanasia, documentation/recordkeeping and herd health/antibiotics. During the training, employees and contractors were evenly split into groups to review the information in the folders and complete the curriculum. Then, they were challenged to create a skit using a combination of PowerPoint slides, props and role playing, complete with pig costumes.
“Our caretakers can easily pull from real life, on-farm scenarios,” said Dan. “They live these practices every day and that was very evident in their skits. It was also evident that none of us take ourselves too seriously,” he laughed.
In addition to the new PQA sessions being downright fun, they’re also much more effective. After every group is done with their skit and a game of Jeopardy is played, employees are required to sit down and take a test on the information covered.
“Test scores are up,” said Shamus Brown, director of multiplication. “Everyone is engaged, learning and most importantly, retaining the information. The PWB team has really done a tremendous job with this program.”
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