Delivering livestock handling training to meat processors

Summary

The meat processing industry has faced some specific issues when approaching the delivery of stock handling training and these included a lack of:trainers formally trained and assessed in what is generically described as ‘low stress’ stock handling and now considered industry best practicetraining materials specifically customised to the meat processing sectortraining options that offered cost effective delivery strategies to service isolated students in what is a very ‘thin’ marketmanagement support, in some cases, to address staff competency in this area.
This project sought to develop and implement cross sectoral livestock handling training for red meat processors, with the view of establishing a baseline package that could further be extended to other sectors, including feedlot, transport and production.
Previous research has indicated that there are a wide range of training programs available across the red meat supply chain.  However, there has been little effort to coordinate the training mainly due to the silo approach to the development and delivery of training courses to the various sectors.
As a result of a previous DAFF financed project there was general agreement by the major stakeholders in the red meat industry that the Unit AHCLSK205A Handle livestock using basic techniques would be the best suited to develop a livestock handling training program for the whole supply chain.
This project outcomes included:the development of training and assessment materials, customised for the processing sectorthe piloting and validation of this material in the delivery of the Unit to stock handlers from beef and sheep processing plantstraining of trainers from RTOs, creating industry capacity for ongoing delivery and assessmentthe creation of the e-learning materials which will enable the delivery of this training tostock handlers in either remote locations or where numbers do not justify the delivery of face to face programs.

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