Potential of the Cambridge Calgary Model for improving inspector-farmer meetings

The workshop was hosted on October 27th by the Danish EURCAW-Pig team and was titled "Developing training tools for inspectors regarding communication about animal welfare in the EU animal on-farm welfare control". 18 out of approximately 40 invited people across the EU member states involved in inspector training on pig welfare issues attended the meeting. Many of them also attended the EURCAW Pigs training workshop in 2020.

The Program included 4 invited speakers: Veterinarian and consultant Christian Kolthoff from PraQtice, Denmark and 3 inspectors: Sofia Väärikkälä from Finland, Helle Nielsen Hansted from Denmark and John Slingerland from The Netherlands. Their presentations were a starting point for discussing the potentials and ideas for production of training material targeted at improving the inspector-farmer communication in the welfare control scenario on pig-farms.

Cambridge Calgary Model (CCM)

Christian Kolthoff presented in a ‘recorded’ presentation the Cambridge Calgary Model (CCM) for improving the meeting between advisor-client (in our case the inspector-farmer meeting). This is a video-based method and the used model includes several steps:

Daily life experiences

The 3 inspectors told about their daily life experiences in the inspector- armer scenario. Based on this it could be concluded that 1) Yes, inspectors experience communicative dilemmas and 2) None of the participating countries provided systematic training in communication during every-day inspections for their inspectors.

Among the conclusions was that EURCAW-Pigs may be able to make a generic CCM-based process description for 1) what defines the good inspector-farmer meeting is and 2) how it can be evaluated using video material in the inspector groups. GDPR-issues in relation to getting the permission of the farmer to film during the inspections have to be taken into account.

Introphoto: Training - communication (©PraQtice)