UIJEONGBU — Gyeonggi Province will distribute a multilingual, game-based livestock disease-control training program free of charge to 583 farms across the province, aiming to strengthen the disease-prevention skills of foreign workers employed on livestock farms.
The province said on the 25th that it will roll out the smart disease-control training system, "Farmdemic II," to the 583 farms that employ foreign workers, starting in September. The move is intended to address the difficulty of accurately conveying disease-control protocols, a problem caused by language differences and limited training conditions even as the share of foreign workers on livestock farms has steadily risen.
"Farmdemic II" is a hands-on learning program that supports 12 languages, including Nepali, Vietnamese and Thai, along with a three-dimensional simulation feature. When a foreign worker logs into the smartphone app, they can carry out essential disease-control procedures — such as farm-entry biosecurity, disinfection of facilities and vehicles, vaccination, and reporting animals suspected of carrying infectious livestock diseases — as if playing a game on a virtual farm. When learners choose actions to suit each situation, the results are displayed immediately, improving both their understanding of the protocols and their engagement with the training.
Managers can check each individual's training completion status through an integrated management system. The system also allows tailored management based on a learner's level and analysis of training performance, enabling disease-control education to be run systematically at each farm. To increase the program's use in the field, Gyeonggi Province held three rounds of practical training and pilot operations for about 70 people, including disease-control officials and foreign workers.
Lee Eun-kyung, head of Gyeonggi Province's Animal Disease Control and Hygiene Division, said, "The number of foreign workers is increasing, but it has been difficult to accurately convey disease-control protocols through language differences and existing training methods." Lee added, "Farmdemic II is a program that lets workers directly experience and repeatedly learn disease-control procedures in a language they are familiar with."
