April 29, 2009

Bacon, Pork and Swine (Puerco??)

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OK, so help me out here. Over the past week the TV, print and online news has been inundated us with information about swine flu. This is just the latest in the onslaught of pork related news in 2009.

This year’s first pork media blitz came from J&D’s where “everything should taste like bacon”. I remember seeing articles in January about it as well as TV spots featuring their award winning bacon-flavored lip-balm. They also have bacon-flavored salt, mayonnaise and other tasty products.

Funny as it may seem, the second news entry of “the other white meat” came up in the headlines of the Financial section. Millions upon millions of dollars in pork-barrel spending was being made by congress in their fast-track budget appropriations for this year. It was voted upon so quickly, no one could even tell what was in it until it was law. I think that should probably be considered a greased pig.

Of course, the third newsworthy item was the introduction of the Swine Flu epidemic. Twitter users were fired up about this subject, tweeting over 10,000 times an hour about it. Some were providing guidance to their followers to not eat pork, others were recommending the purchase of Tamiflu medication by the case. At the end of the day, the “puerco flu” appears to be strongly growing in Spain and Mexico for some reason.

I applaud the stalwart support that the guys over at J&D have been providing to this much maligned species this year. It has been hard to put a good face on piggies what with them being associated with US deficit spending and nasty cases of respiratory disease. I also applaud President Obama for renaming this epidemic to H1-N1. This new name is much less detrimental to the long term online reputation of our favorite breakfast meat.

If the National Pork Producers Council would be interested in other ways we can positively impact swine online reputation, they can contact me at 937-573-8535

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