Things You Might Notice Volunteering with National Pork Board

It has been my pleasure and honor to work with various aspects of the National Pork Board (NPB) in recent years. Since the Board is at one level a grassroots organization and a Public Private partnership at another, I would like to offer some observations. Here are 10 things I have observed about this organization.

1) The National Pork Board is a Public/Private partnership that is funded by mandatory checkoff dollars from anyone that sells a market hog.


 Public in that it is overseen closely by USDA in Washington DC. The secretary of Ag holds final appointment powers over the seats on the board. USDA, through the Ag Marketing Service, watches the $$$ closely. So closely in fact that if my wife travels with me on a Pork Board activity, we must keep separate receipts. An unexplained can of pop with my snack at the airport will get questioned. Interestingly,  a $40 dinner for me will sale right through.




Private in that the money that funds the organization comes directly and exclusively from private producer pocket books. Great effort is expended for all private producers to have a voice in how these $$$ are spent. I have found it quite possible for a single producer's voice to influence many actions of the Pork Board.




2) Money talks. It should surprise no one, that since funds are collected based on the sale of market animals, those who sell large numbers of animals contribute larger sums of $$$ than those who sell lesser numbers. This at one level is fair. It should not surprise you then to discover that those people/organizations that are contributing large numbers of $$$ to fund the organization seem to have a way of getting things done that are agreeable to their viewpoint. This is not to imply anything untoward of anyone. It is to recognize the reality that $$$ talks and wise management has a way of listening.




3) Generous and caring people. I have met many very fine caring people in my activities with the National Pork Board. I have found that the people involved have a natural bent toward generously helping others, even at great personal, mental, and financial expense. When I am in the company of fellow volunteers I feel a sense of connectedness, importance, and pride. It is an energizing thing.


4) Climate change is institutionalized. I have heard researchers say that scientist are not being promoted in academia unless their research has moved the needle on Climate Change. The big money is going to climate research. Academia has gotten the message loud and clear. The administration (written during the Obama administration) (USDA) is focused on climate change, controls board appointments at the National Pork Board, is the regulator that the National Pork Board must work with, so climate change is the order of the day.


"People pigs and planet", is the tag line that is published on every piece of paper coming from the National Pork Board. Which sounds very much like the tag line for the environmental accounting system know as "the Triple Bottom Line", that system is often called" Profit, People and Planet". read more here "People, Planet, Profit" appears way down This accounting leads directly to discussions of  sustainability and continuous improvement. Two concepts that are making obvious appearances in the National Pork Boards activities.


 Government control of an industry is not far behind, which, of course, equals the lose of private property rights, which means a lose of individual freedom. Gone are discussions about the freedom to operate that I used to hear at National Pork Board events. Secretary Vilsack states openly, "....we delegate the responsibility of raising food to farmers....". Where do I go to get my certificate that says the right to farm has been delegated to me?




5) There is a natural tendency toward organizations getting bigger. More regulations are not as harmful to the big operation as they are to the smaller one, so the big operation can use regulations to put pressure on the smaller one. The Common Swine Industry Audit (CSIA) does exactly this. Whether it is intentional or not you can decide. The packers, who incidentally own a lot of hogs and therefore contribute a lot to the checkoff appear to me to be less concerned about the audit than the independent producer. This stands to reason, since the CSIA is funded and administered outside the National Pork Board's budget and control. The packers are the primary funders of the audits.




6) There are "elites" that have larger voices than others. They don't even have to own pigs or eat meat to influence NPB actions. Temple Grandin has never attended a meeting of the animal welfare committee in the time I have been there or been on a conference call that I have attended, but she can/has changed the course of the committee's decisions simply by dropping an email to the chairman. Is this wrong? I don't know. But it certainly puts her in a class of people where there are but a few members, an "elite".


Food industry executives and financiers are another group that has similar power. I witnessed this at the Sustainable Ag Summit, in a break out session on investing. It was clear the investment fund managers on the stage had the attention of the executives from some of the world's largest food companies and that policies were going to be changed in accordance with these views. No where in the discussion was the farmer or National Pork Board for that matter mentioned. Again, money talks.




7) Over in the beef side of life, cattlemen resisted the expansion of their checkoff. Ag Secretary Vilsack attempted to start a new checkoff which failed. The administration (USDA) then cut beef from dietary guidelines. You connect the dots.


The pork industry hired a CEO from the packing industry who made the rounds of state organizations talking about  People, Pigs, and Planet but saying the industry could define "Sustainability" however it wanted (see #4 above). This CEO lasted less than a year.  read of the reality here "...Sustainable development was defined by the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations in 1987." A new CEO is hired who introduces himself as, "...working for those who pay checkoff...". See point #2. And " .....I am glad Pork doesn't have an RCALF...". If you see RCALF as a group of cattlemen adamantly defending individual property rights and personal freedom, I fear challenges ahead. (see point 4 and 9).




9) The pork industry is on a path of consolidation, the packers (the big $$$ in #1) seem to have a lot of control. They seem interested in margin on volume. This makes it easy to understand the industry's support for multinational trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The trade deals would bring in more volume, therefore more margin. Consequently, all I have heard as a producer is,  "It is great!", without any discussion of the impacts on freedom and US sovereignty. The added rules put pressure on the independent producer in the form of added costs that naturally drives those producers to consider contracting with the packers (see #5). I share more thoughts in this blog


10) I am not trained in corporate communication/politics/coalition building etc. I simply have my own eyes, ears, ideas and conscience (individualism) to fall back on and hope for support. Many things seem to be discussed outside of the meetings I attend since many of the people know each other on multiple levels from multiple professional situations. I have never felt directly excluded from a conversation in particular but many times the conversation goes right past me or over my head. I simply don't have the connections to piece the conversation together. This leaves me feeling like a lone small voice many times. But from time to time my voice makes a difference (see #1). I am glad I can have that kind of impact for my fellow producers.

Surveilance, Disease, Freedom, and Hard Choices

I spent part of this week in Washington D.C. as a producer representative from the National Pork Board's Swine Welfare Committee to a meeting hosted by FAZD. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together the main people charged with protecting the United States from foreign animal and plant diseases. I was interested in attending to learn more of how this topic will impact me as a participate in the Fair Oaks Pig Adventure, where it is anticipated that 200,000 people a year will visit. My son, Samuel Wildman, is doing a summer internship here training the tour guides and greeters. You can follow his adventure at Reflections of a Country Boy.


Fair Oaks Pig Adventure

The meeting turned out to be a room full of three letter acronyms DHS, CBP, APHIS, NPB to name a few.

impressive list of speakers and topics

Here are some of my "take home" observations from the event:

1) There are some really smart, talented, and hard working people in government that want to do a good job of protecting us, the citizens of this country. Looking over the agenda shown above, to refer to most of these speakers as "Doctor" is an understatement.

2) These folks and their peers often risk their lives, whether it be at a port of entry or a border post facing down criminal activity, in a laboratory testing an unknown substance, in the field collecting samples, or in a foreign land asking questions their host is not interested in answering.



A few people show up early to meetings

3) It is a monumental task when you think about all the people and commerce that move in and out of this country everyday and the potential for disease transfer. 160+ staffed and 200+ non-staffed ports of entry along with miles and miles of coast and border that are defacto unofficial ports of entry. And not just people and commerce move across these borders, but wildlife and livestock ranging freely back and forth need attention also.

4) Surveillance, intelligence gathering and privacy rights become hot topics and require considered and negotiated trade offs. Indeed this was the flash point between the producers and the three letter acronyms in the room. We all recognize the other's legitimate desire for more or less as the case may be but disagreement exists about where the trade offs should start and stop.

police drone (guardian.co.uk)

The point was made that all (the vast majority) of disease discoveries come from "passive" surveillance. Someone, a citizen, sees something and asks a question, (ie. why is my animal sick) and bingo the authorities have helpful new information.

The capture of the Boston Bomber suspect is illustrative of this surveillance situation. Caught in a gun fight with police (active surveillance) he escapes despite the most intensive surveillance the government can bring to bare ... until the citizens of Boston are released from their homes. Then bingo, a citizen sees something wrong with his boat (passive surveillance) and the authorities have helpful new information.

This passive surveillance is extremely powerful, if properly harnessed, but it is absolutely dependent on the citizen trusting the government to handle the information properly. The discussion made it clear that this trust has been severely damaged by the recent scandals in many agencies at the federal level. Targeting citizens with the IRS, targeting news reporters, spinning tales about Benghazi, the EPA releasing data to activist and leadership that pleads ignorance all cut into the citizen's trust that government will handle information properly. Why would a citizen give passive surveillance information to the authorities if there is doubt they will use it properly or maybe even use it against the citizen that produced it? Trust is fundamental and severely lacking right now.

Questions arise after information is available.

Who owns that information? The citizen? The laboratory? The authority?
What can/must the owner do with that information? The answer is different for each one so the answer is critical.

5) Government, does not think it can, "Do more with less". The thought of "Do the same with less" or "Do less with less" never even surfaced. Government always wants to, "Do more with more". Government doesn't see the irony that if they are going to "Do more with more" then the citizens are going to have to "Do more with less" or "Do the same with less" or "Do less with less". In other words the citizen will have to do exactly that which the government finds impossible! This amounts to a lose of FREEDOM!

The entire meeting was filled with the adjectives more, bigger, larger, faster, greater. I remember no statement that suggested less of anything. Listen/watch this ad that is billed as "conservative" and see what adjectives are used to illustrate my point. Rubio Immigration Reform Ad

6) Government struggles to think of itself as working for the public. The language is always "How can we push this down to the producer?" "How can we control this activity?" "We need to get them to ..." "What does the penalty need to be to stop xyz?" and so on. The language is always "we" (government) and "them" (citizens).

The closest the conversation came to the realization that the citizen runs the government and not the other way around was, "We are glad producers are here, we want to hear what they have to say".

7) Those in power build monuments to themselves. Pharaohs built pyramids, Kings built castles and palaces, Governments build buildings. According to the U.S. Constitution there are three coequal branches of government, the legislative, judicial, and executive. Now let's look at the "monuments" (buildings) in our great capital city of Washington DC. The Judicial Branch has the Supreme Court and some office space, the Legislative Branch has the Capitol Building and three office buildings, the Executive Branch has the White House and some office space next door, .... and the Pentagon, and the Federal Triangle, and the EPA, and the Department of Labor, and the Department of Education, and the etc, etc, etc..

Who in our government has the power? Are these branches coequal?

This observation can be easily explained away but it does make you think.



U.S EPA Building (enviromedia.com)

8) There are always those things you hear and don't quite understand but they leave a little bell ringing in the back of your head. This event left me pondering "One Health" and the comment that was repeated in various ways and times about how CPD is "collecting ???gigabytes of data every hour" into a database that is available to multiple agencies for data mining. Both these little bells warn me of government doing more with more and my FREEDOM becoming less. But I will have to hold that opinion until later when I understand more.

9) I was surprised at the lack of the use of social media by the participants. It seems to me that people's personal use of social media is inversely related to their position in an organization. That is just a theory of mine.

So these are some of my personal impressions of the event and should be read as such. I do not always listen well and have been known to misinterpret things even when I did listen well. But hopefully, these observations will give you things to think about as you consider  the question, "Where does food come from?".