Pork Board Debuts Online Education Materials

Lizzy SchultzAg Group, Communications, consumer, Education, Pork, Pork Checkoff

pork checkoff As part of their ongoing commitment to transparency and increased communication efforts, the National Pork Board has announced the debut of two new online resources, Pork Quick Facts and the Pork Checkoff Photo Library, to help build transparency and trust in the industry. The Checkoff’s Quick Facts provides a snapshot of the pork industry through statistics and infographics, while the Pork Checkoff Photo Library shares images of pig farms across America.

“Today, farm and ranch families make up only 2 percent of the U.S. population, with most of the other 98 percent two or more generations removed from the farm,” said National Pork Board President Jan Archer, a pig farmer from Goldsboro, North Carolina. “That makes it even more important to share how we raise safe, high-quality pork. The Checkoff’s new online resources will help bridge the gap as consumers increasingly ask how their food is raised.”

Pork Quick Facts is an information center, specifically designed for consumers, media, educators, students and others looking for an overview of the pork industry. Quick Facts features infographics that depict all things pork, including the life cycle of a market pig, what responsible antibiotic use means on a farm, bacon facts and U.S. pork export achievements.

The resources can answer a variety of questions from concerned consumers, and also provides statistics on everything from top U.S. pork export markets to state rankings for pork production, and from U.S. pork expenditures to the attributes of a typical market hog.

“Pig farmers also are a key audience for Quick Facts, with the production benchmarking stats serving as a powerful management tool,” said Chris Hostetler, director of animal science for the Pork Checkoff. “The data can benefit all producers by identifying areas for improvement in caring for their pigs and producing pork for their customers.

The new Pork Checkoff Photo Library features images that were taken on farms across the country, and the library is designed to give the public a visual resource to help them learn how pigs are raised today. The library, housed on the popular online photo storage website Flickr, contains more than 1,000 high-resolution photos that can be viewed and downloaded in different sizes for use in everything from social media posts to print publications.

Photo categories include biosecurity, environment/crops, exports, farms/buildings, feed/feeders/bins, pigs, safety, transport, ventilation and waterers.