North America’s pork industry could perhaps be likened to a giant and diverse flotilla churning through stormy seas toward an unfamiliar port. Well-seasoned captains gathered from Western Canada and beyond were advised of the ways and means to navigate those waters and the outcomes they can anticipate during plenary sessions of the Banff Pork Seminar on Jan. 10 and 11.

WORLD WILDLIFE FUND

Any fears that their industry would coming under fire from one of the planet’s most respected environmental groups slowly evaporated as World Wildlife Fund’s Sandra Vijn addressed the nostalgia she feels for the farm her family had operated in the Netherlands.

The pastoral image of weather-hardened farmers tending rich, brown soil, cannot fly as food production gears up to produce more food on fewer acres and without destroying the environment in the process, said Vijn, a director of the WWF’s Sustainable Food Team and based in its Washington DC office.

In her description of the organization’s position on sustainable food production, Vijn said Planet Earth is already giving up more soil and water resources than it can sustain.

The task facing livestock producers is to raise as much protein as possible while tightly limiting their reliance on water and soil as the demand for meat grows even faster than the human population.

“So, 7.6 billion people already consume 1.6 times what the Earth can provide. It means that we are using water at a faster pace than it can be regenerated and stored. We’re depleting the soils and we’re putting more carbon out than the Earth can absorb,” said Vijn. “In short, we need to find solutions. Over the next 40 years, we need to produce as much food as we did in the last 8,000 years,” she said.

While poultry producers are in the lead, the pork industry is doing a good job and is well ahead of beef in producing more protein with less water and a smaller environmental footprint, she said. Vijn encouraged pork producers to continue developing technologies that would further improve their efficiency.

Possibly one of the most obvious solutions to getting more from less would be to dramatically reduce the amount of food that is wasted, said Vijn. Globally, one out of three calories is wasted and, in the United States, 40 per cent of the food produced is thrown out, she said. “It’s a shame, because we work hard to produce that food and it wastes a lot of energy and resources.” While protein producers look to technology to improve their efficiency, they come against opposition from people who confuse environmental sustainability with unrelated personal and public health issues, said Vijn.

In her paper, submitted to the BPS, she said it is critical that animal producers work with environmental groups to communicate the importance of improving the environmental sustainability of food production, largely by being more transparent about how meat, poultry and dairy products are made. “What we need to do is work together,” she said in her presentation.

“There is no silver bullet. You might work with strange bedfellows, you might need to work with people that you’re a little uncomfortable with, but getting everybody on the same page and to understand what needs to be done – and in the first place, to understand what you’re already doing and where you’re going and why you make decisions – is very important.”

CHANGING THE CONVERSATION

Toronto-based marketing guru Terry O’Reilly, the whiz kid behind CBC Radio’s weekly show, The Age of Persuasion, said after his presentation the next day that having the support of seemingly opposing groups can put a lot of power in the industry’s marketing punch.

“Some sympatico, some common ground, that’s a very effective partnership. Find credible allies because it adds another dimension to your message,” he said.

Within his presentation, O’Reilly did not address pork marketing issues directly, but offered advice on how any group can tackle and change the way its message is perceived. Examples he discussed included how Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, completely altered its image after the Second World War. Marlboro at the time was considered a woman’s cigarette, said O’Reilly. Seeking to improve sales, the marketing team chose a small test market and used the image of the most rugged individual it could conceive – a wind burned cowboy.

Smokers readily accepted Marlboro Country’s machismo image, to the point that tourists visiting the western states starting asking for directions to a place that existed only in the imagery marketers had created. Terming Philip Morris’s success with Marlboro as “advertising’s darkest success,” O’Reilly said a brand is an idea that sticks, “like burrs in a wool sweater.” The Marlboro campaign proved that “perception was an idea and an idea could be influenced.” It’s never easy, but it’s not impossible, said O’Reilly.

Simply stating facts and the sorts of things an organization stands for does not have the persuasive power needed to change the way a brand is seared into the public psyche, he said. The most effective means for changing the conversation is to play on emotions and tell the world what you stand against, he said. He told BPS gathering that finding a little nugget of truth that will work in their favour is a matter of stepping outside their own perceptions and doing some very solid research, and then finding creative ways to express that truth.

“Let the research reveal itself – do not stick-handle the results,” he advised. “Ask the right questions and listen to the answers. The best marketers are the best listeners. You can change the conversation. “There are a lot of voices out there that are interrupting your conversation. What you have to do then, your story telling, your marketing, has to be really compelling. It can’t just be straight facts. You have to grab people’s imaginations. You have to grab their attention. It’s not speaking louder, it’s speaking more creatively,” said O’Reilly.

Mulling over his words afterward, Alberta producer and industry leader Jurgen Preugschas said his personal bias would likely interfere with his ability to be effective under O’Reilly’s recommendations. Looking at O’Reilly’s suggestion about fighting against something, Preugschas said perhaps a campaign could be built around an idea that was brought up at a marketing meeting he attended in Uruguay, where delegates learned that, to develop to its full potential, a baby needs meat in its diet for the first 1,000 days of its life, starting at conception. Preugschas asked: Who could not identify with a fight against malnourished babies?

Mark Chambers, Chair of the BPS advisory committee, later said branding involves changing the conversation so people know what the industry stands for and what it doesn’t stand for.

For example, the issue of using gestation stalls is a hot topic that people outside of the industry really don’t understand, said Chambers.

“We’ve got to connect so people understand that the way we produce (pork) is best for us and best for the animals and then get on with it,” he said.

FEAR NO SCIENCE

Chemist “Dr. Joe” Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, addressed the growing mistrust of science, including fears of genetically modified organisms and the variety of chemicals used in raising food. Scientists who were once trusted, are now considered to be conspirators in destroying the world, said Schwarcz.

“This is something we like to fight against in my office at McGill,” said Schwarcz. “We try to shine light into the dark crevices of the world of pseudo-science. There’s a lot of it out there. Quacks are all over the place, telling us to trust them with their compelling stories and we argue with them, but they’re very good. They’re getting bigger and bigger and it’s getting harder and harder to . . . overturn their cockamamie ideas,” he said.

Their success lies largely among the sector of the population who are so scientifically illiterate, clever marketers can sell them dehydrated water. Schwarcz explained how easy it is to misconstrue facts by confusing hazards with risk.

“If there is one thing you should take home from this little presentation today, there is a difference between hazard and risk,” said Schwarcz. Hazard describes the inherent property of a material or object to cause harm. Risk arises not from the existence of a hazard, but from how it is presented, said Schwarcz. For example, a grizzly bear in a zoo can be classified as a hazard, but the risk is minimal because it is in a cage. In the wilderness, however, the risk would be much higher because the bear has freedom to travel. Plant products do contain small amounts of residue from pesticide use, he said. However, the amounts are biologically meaningless, he said.

“In some cases, organic agriculture works well. But it will always be a niche market, because we cannot produce enough food to feed all the people in the world without relying on agro-chemicals.”

GMOs fall into the same basket in terms of public perception, with the general population’s ignorance of science feeding their fear of food from genetically engineered plants, said Schwarcz.

Yes, technology must come under scrutiny, but decisions should be made based on the science and not on overblown claims and misinformed judgments, he said. And where there is a small risk, it must be weighed against the benefits.

“Soon, a billion more people will be coming to dinner. We have to be able to feed them.”

HOW MUCH METHANE IS THAT PER LITRE OF MILK PRODUCED?

Animal Science Prof. Frank Mitloehner, an air quality specialist at the University of California, Davis campus, picked up the discussion with his findings concerning the carbon footprint of livestock production, landing firmly in the camp of intensive farming.

After making mincemeat of a report that decries the dairy and beef industries for the levels of greenhouse gases they produce, Mitloehner went on to state that the US Environmental Protection Agency rates greenhouse gases from livestock production at slightly more than four per cent of the total with, all cattle at just over three per cent and swine at 0.47 per cent – a far cry less than the 71 per cent suggested by some activists.

Where the statistics really start to tell a story of sustainability is when the amount of production from those North American animals is compared with other regions in the world. Mitloehner put up a chart showing the payoff from the high efficiency of dairy farms in the US. Utilizing statistics collected by the US Department of Agriculture, he stated that one US dairy cow produces 22,248 pounds (10,112 kg) of milk per year along with 500 grams of methane gas. Indian cows, by comparison, produce 2,500 pounds of milk (1,126 kg) and 4,000 grams of methane.

Reproductive efficiency, veterinary care, improved genetics and energy-dense diets are among the tools that allow US farmers to produce more protein with fewer inputs and a much smaller carbon footprint, said Mitloehner.

“This is a relationship that is totally unknown to the people that are buying your products. They think the opposite is true,” he said. Furthering his argument for intensification and improved efficiency, he said that, today, 90 million beef cattle in the US produce the same amount of beef as 140 million cattle produced in 1970. “Does that have an effect on the environment? You bet.”

Farming practices in other regions, especially India and Southeast Asia are not sustainable and must be improved to meet needs of a growing population and reduce the carbon impact of livestock production, said Mitloehner.

“This historic advance that we see here in the beef industry, in the dairy industry, and . . . also in the pork industry could be achieved globally today if technologies that we have learned to appreciate here were to transfer into places like India or China,” he said.

“We have to intensify throughout the world in ways that we have done in North America. We have no choice.”

China has a five-year plan, but is faced with the challenge of trying to find new occupations for 700 million workers who will be displaced as efficiencies improve on its farms, said Mitloehner.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Supply and demand will continue to have the final word as North America’s pork industry redefines itself with bigger farms and increasing slaughter capacity, said economists Steve Meyer, VP of Express Markets Inc. Analytics in Fort Wayne, Ind. and Kevin Grier of Guelph, Ont. as the 2017 BPS drew to a close.

“We finally got some good news on the demand front for pork, and it’s the same story on beef,” Grier said during a tag-team presentation with Meyer. “Red meat demand is very, very strong in North America,” he said.

Meyer said demand for pork was not quite as strong last year as in 2014 and 2015, but continues on an upward trend. He credits part of the renewed popularity of red meats to new research on dietary fats, published in a book, The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. “We had cheap hogs and sold a lot of them,” said Meyer.

Hog demand in the US rose through exports, although growth in its export markets has slowed in recent years.

Grier said he continues to hear that Canada cannot compete globally. He said there is no evidence of US taking away market share on domestic consumption. Imports have stabilized while exports to US have picked up, he said. “There is no evidence that we can’t compete with the Americans, trade-wise, in our own market or even in theirs,” said Grier.

“We’re clearly a global presence. As a matter of fact, we’ve increased our global production compared to the EU and compared to the world over the last four years. We may be the sixth or seventh largest producer, but we’re the third largest exporter.

“To say that Canada can’t compete is misinformed.” Meyer said he has “a lot of faith” in the adaptability and the creative ability of producers in Canada and in the United States.

“It’s amazing what you can do. Packing stanchions will be quickly filled. They always lag, you’re always going to be right up against the wall with expansion before you get it into the plant, but in that expansion, it’s really lumpy. You don’t get a small expansion – they come in large chunks, and they’re almost all going to be integrated in the future to a large degree,” said Meyer.

“There is this little problem about where all the pork’s going to go,” he said.

Grier said worries about how President Donald Trump will manage existing trade agreements may be misplaced. Free trade in livestock existed before the North American Free Trade Agreement and will likely survive updates. “US presidents have never been interested in agriculture,” said Grier.

He finished his talk by congratulating the BPS advisory committee for inviting Sandra Vijn to provide the WWF’s outlook on the role meat producers will play in meeting increasing demands of a growing population. •

— By Brenda Kossowan