Innovative e-Learning Training Modules to Improve Animal Welfare during Transport and Slaughter of Pigs: A Pretest-Posttest Study to Pre-Evaluate the General Didactical Concept

Simple Summary Legal regulations at European and national level create the basis for the protection of animals. A certificate of competence is obligatory when animals intended for human consumption are handled or slaughtered. Within the project eSchulTS2, e-learning training courses for employees of transport companies and abattoirs were developed to the improve animal welfare of pigs during transport and slaughter. This study was to assess the impact on the respective knowledge of employee groups with different educational level and background at one pig abattoir in Germany and to pre-evaluate the innovative and low-barrier didactical concept of the e-learning training courses. By using questions of knowledge, it was shown that more questions of knowledge were answered correctly after conducting the courses. Together with interactions shown by further statistical methods, this pre-evaluation showed that with the underlying didactical concept, an increase in knowledge was achieved.Abstract In addition to the information on the possession of a certificate of competence, there are no concrete obligations for repetitive training for personnel handling live animals at transport and slaughter. Deficiencies in the animal-welfare-friendly handling of pigs are known. The developed pilot modules Handling of pigs and Electrical stunning were tested in a pretest-posttest study in German and Romanian using questions of knowledge before and after the implementation of the modules. In this study, 45 and 46 datasets of participants could be analyzed. The mean percentages of correctly answered questions in the posttest increased by 5.6% in the module Handling of pigs and by 10.6% in the module Electrical stunning. A significant interaction was found for the language match and trend categories in the module Handling of pigs. No Romanian native speaker had a positive trend in this module. For both modules separately, participant education level significantly interacted with the language match and the presence or absence of a certificate of competence. Comparing the percentages of the correct given answers, significant interactions in the subgroups were more common in the module Electrical stunning. One question in Electrical stunning was correctly answered significantly more often in the posttest. Because of the positive mean trends of knowledge within this pre-evaluation, we assume the didactical concept was suitable for our target groups. Holders of a certificate of competence also gave more correct answers in the post-test. This underlines the importance of repetitive training. Differences in the trends of knowledge gain seem to be topic and experience related.

Automated summary

This study assessed the impact of e-learning training courses on the knowledge level of employees at a pig abattoir in Germany. The results showed that the courses were effective in increasing knowledge.