Pork producers seek to mend battered image

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - The hog industry, criticized by animal rights activists, environmentalists and food safety groups, is taking steps to improve its battered image.

Plans are underway to hire an image consultant to rebuild consumer trust, industry officials told a gathering of pork producers in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mark Williams, president of Mark H. Williams & Co, who had previously worked with the agency that developed advertisements such as "Pork - the Other White Meat" and the milk mustache for the dairy industry, is expected to be tapped for the job.

"There is no 'magic wand' ad to put their trust in us. There needs to be a program that is supportive to our various audiences," Williams told the gathering.

"It's really all about gaining the trust of all those audiences -- the trust that we in the pork industry are capable of overseeing and regulating ourselves, that we don't need consumer advocates to regulate us and we don't need regulators and law makers to regulate us," he said.

The pork industry, as well as other livestock industries, have been coming under increasing attack from animal welfare, environmental and food safety groups.

This continually puts the industry in a negative position, with the possibility of unwanted regulations or legislation impacting operations and their profitability.

Animal rights groups have been hitting the industry hard over the use of gestation crates for breeding sows and abuses of animals at both the farm and packing plants.

Environmentalists are up in arms over leaking lagoons on hog farms and the smell associated with hog operations. And there has been growing consumer concern over what hogs are fed and, in turn, the meat that ends up on the dinner table.

A new sweeping "Ethical Principles" document came to the forefront of discussion by pork producers attending their annual National Pork Industry Forum here.

Top officials of the nations' pork producer groups attending the forum are seeking support for the document, which they hope will combat a growing wave of external challenges and bad press while uplifting the industry's image.

"For the past few years, and it seems increasingly, other people are seeking to define who we are -- and it's time for that to stop," Don Butler, vice president of the National Pork Producers Council, told the gathering. "It's incumbent on the pork industry, and all of us here, to define who we are."

"We believe that the time has come for us to articulate a statement of ethical principles for the U.S. swine industry. This is a new direction for the pork industry," Butler said.

Members from both the National Pork Board and National Pork Producers Council have been working since last summer to produce principles and a new image that may be promoted in the future as strongly as the current "White Meat" advertising campaign.

Delegates from both groups at the gathering were expected to endorse the principles.

Another motion that will be brought up by the Pork Board on Friday or Saturday is that the board move fast to address what producers claim is the onslaught of a press that builds distrust by the public.

(Editing by Walter Bagley)