University News for December 17, 2009

Officials with the University of Manitoba expect the new Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre to become an important tool for disseminating the results of research conducted at the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment.

Construction of the Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre, located at the Glenlea Research Station and part of the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment, began officially earlier this week.

Dr. Karin Wittenberg, the associate dean research with the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, says early and middle-year school children were initially the primary target audience but as planning progressed it became clear the new learning centre can play a role in informing the general public.

Clip-Dr. Karin Wittenberg-University of Manitoba:
The research that we do involves a number of livestock species including dairy and beef cattle, swine and poultry.

The work goes on both at this location as well as other locations in the province and on the campus of the University of Manitoba.

The Discovery Centre really allows us through programming to share insights into for example how nutrition of animal can influence the quality of a food that's produced by that animal that then becomes nutrition for the human consuming it.

We learn a great deal through the Discovery Centre about the bugs in our environment, how they help us, how they sometimes hurt us.

This can be the bugs of the digestive system in the animal, the microbes in the soil, it could be the microbes in your kitchen and we learn a little bit about how in a farm, in a food ecosystem, nutrients, carbon, energy, water, microbes move.

Dr. Wittenberg says there's a great deal of excitement and issues surrounding food production and the new learning centre is designed to answer questions about food and where and how its produced.

The new Farm and Food Discovery Centre is expected to be operational by October of next year.

For UniversityNews.Org, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

*University News is a presentation of the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural & Food Sciences