Red meat processors tackle staff shortages with school-based outreach

Despite its crucial role in bringing meat to our plates each night, research has revealed a lack of awareness about the processing sector and its career opportunities among students.

Recent research funded by the Australian Meat Processor Corporation aimed to gauge the education sector's understanding and endorsement of meat processing careers.

Both primary and secondary educators from ag and non-ag teaching departments were surveyed.

CQ University lead researcher Dr Jamie Manning said one of the key findings was a limited understanding among teachers of exactly what the sector was, especially if they did not have ag qualifications.

"To them it's a butcher, it's a farmer, it's paddock to plate, and while that's not necessarily wrong, there was very little of them that could actually name that abattoir processing part in the middle that is the red meat processing sector," she said.

Dr Manning said teachers in rural towns or communities had a stronger connection to the sector.

"There were teachers who taught arts and had no connection to ag, but they drove past the local Teys or knew that they sponsored the local football team," she said.

"That community involvement of the red meat processing sector in their community was enough to change their perception and see it as a suitable career option or at least a career path for their students to consider."

Dr Manning said the research showed a need to highlight that roles in the sector were diverse.

"You ask teachers, or anyone really, what roles do you think make up the red meat processing sector and they think of all those roles that are very dirty, and yes we need lots of different types of people in the sector but they don't necessarily think about all the innovation and technology that's happening.

"The sector is doing lots of innovative things and students love hearing about those kinds of stories and that's going to be a really key part of that conversation."

Dr Manning said teachers tended to avoid topics in the classroom they were not confident on.

"The first key part of all of our projects is increasing awareness and confidence of teachers, and that's going to have flow-on effects to the students they see every single day."

In terms of practical solutions for the classroom to broaden that knowledge base, Dr Manning ran focus groups to see how those conversations would go with students.

In primary schools she ran activities such as getting students to identify different roles in the supply chain and allowing them to dress up as those roles.

For example, students could identify there needed to be a truck driver, or a vet to look after the animals, and so on.

"Whilst they might not be able to name specific roles, they still had some idea of the parts of the process and that something has to happen for the animal to end up as a piece of meat or a product."

Hands-on activities were also really helpful in primary school settings.

"One of the areas we focused on was disease control, so meat inspection type roles that are really crucial.

"We gave out kits and got students to handle meat, clean up their table, and then we had some meat swabs to work out whether they left any residue on the table. Then we did little tests to look at things like e-coli.

"We tried to show them some of those more lab-based roles that are also crucial and part of the sector, but again are sort of one of those invisible roles that we don't really see often," she said.

Dr Manning said the next step was to ensure there was change at a national level. She hoped the research would encourage the sector to find ways to better equip schools and processing plants to bridge that gap.

"Part of our focus groups for secondary schools was partnering some of our local schools in Rocky with Teys and we took them on a tour tried to get those teachers a bit more confident in their connection with the local meat processing plants," she said.

"Majority of our processing sector is really open to having students visit and plants are happy to be part of that conversation regardless of what they need, whether it was a tour, guest lecture, or a product they needed. They're really happy to facilitate that part."