Story by Madelyn Ostendorf
At any given moment, more than 1 million hogs are being transported across the United States via semi-trailers. When one of those transport vehicles is involved in an accident, emergency responders must know what to do.
At the request of several rural emergency management teams, the Iowa Pork Industry Center at Iowa State University developed trainings to give emergency responders experience with livestock handling and rollovers.
“The purpose of the trainings is to focus on emergency response teams – firefighters, police departments, EMTs,” says Laura Greiner, Iowa Pork Industry Center director. “We want to make sure they understand what to do if they come upon a livestock trailer that's rolled onto its side and the process that is required to help everyone involved.”
Classroom trainings were offered in the fall of 2025, conducted on a county-by-county basis by field specialists. The participating emergency teams get hands-on experience with an upright transport vehicle and tow truck, evaluating the trailer and seeing where they could cut through to get animals out.
Greiner says partnerships with local towing and livestock production companies are key to the training’s success, as they provide livestock trailers and equipment demonstrations so responders can practice evaluating and accessing transport vehicles.
“The program provided excellent, practical training for our local responders,” says Andy Miller, Washington County ISU Extension and Outreach county director. “Hearing the wrecking crew’s perspective on accident scenes and seeing how they coordinate with emergency teams and farmers to protect animal welfare was incredibly insightful.”
Participants also watch simulation videos and work through real-life scenarios. Greiner says the classroom portion of the training was adapted from training sessions conducted by Iowa State’s Swine Medicine Education Center, which holds annual training sessions for larger urban emergency teams.
Greiner says the more than 150 individuals who have taken the training have been very positive about it. Several have requested additional training for agriculture-related emergencies, such as barn fires. Participants can also receive certificates of completion for continuing education credit.
“The Iowa Pork Industry Center’s focus is serving the producer, and this may seem a little bit outside of the range of that,” Greiner says. “But we're still serving the producer, just in a different way. This was a novel approach for us as a team, and we're definitely still exploring what other things we can do, because this is a population we didn't know was underserved and has needs we can assist with.”