Meat + Poultry - January 2006 - 68

FSI MEDIA WATCH

YOUR LINK THROUGH THE FOOD CHAIN

Greg Henderson

Coordinated communication

■

Want to know what made last
Thanksgiving such a nice holiday?
If you think it was Aunt Judy's rum-laced
pecan pie, you are wrong. It was the
wide-spread, unified message from the
food industry in response to the avian
influenza virus.
When bird flu first grabbed the
attention of the nation's mainstream
media late last summer, the usual happened - splashy headlines and
voiceovers predicted impending doom. ABC News
Primetime called it
"The NextBig One,"
quoting a Columbia
University professor's prediction: "We
could have a billion people
dying worldwide."
Laurie Garrett of Foreign Affairs
magazine wrote, "Humanity could face
a pandemic unlike any ever witnessed,"
quoting the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention's prediction of 207,000
U.S. deaths and one-third of the U.S. population ill in a medium-level epidemic.
Not surprisingly, PETA got into
the action with a story on goveg.com
headlined "Eating Meat Threatens
Millions With Bird Flu."
The weeks leading up to the
poultry-laden holiday offered more
grim headlines. Indonesia's official death
toll had reached seven. Forty-two had
died in Vietnam, and China had just
revealed its first two casualties with unofficial reports claiming 300 dead.
Any marketer will tell you that
aligning a product with death isn't
sound salesmanship. Stories tying poultry
to those deaths just before Thanksgiving could have spelled doom for the
poultry industry. Then, a soothing and
scientifically sound response echoed
across the country:
■ "There is absolutely no risk in eating
poultry," University of California-Davis
poultry specialist Francine Bradley told
the Woodland News (California).

16 FSI

FOOD SYSTEMS

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JANUARY 2006

■ "The biggest worry is that we cook it
sufficiently," Barrett Slenning, an animalbiosecurity specialist, told New York
City's WNBC4.
■ "Eating properly handled and cooked
poultry is safe," CDC and global-health
officials told The Associated Press.
■ "There is absolutely no evidence that
we have this strain of H5N1 in animals
or in humans in the United States," Ron
DeHaven, head of the
USDA's Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service, told
Reuters.
■ "There is no
danger of acquiring
avian influenza from
normally and properly
cooked food," Michael Rybolt, the
National Turkey Federation's manager
of scientific and regulatory affairs, said
in a pre-holiday press release.
■ "The consumer does not need to be
concerned about the health of poultry
they may bring home," House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte told Reuters.
There have been many cases where
consumer concerns outweighed science.
So, even if there was no risk to eating
turkey during the holidays, an unclear
message from the experts might have
opened the door to fearful boycotts.
A clear message from many arenas
(education, science, government and
industry) didn't just stave off economic
doom for the industry, it allowed it to
flourish. According to a Nov. 23 article in
the Chicago Tribune, "The sale of
Thanksgiving birds, in fact, continued a
yearlong rally for turkey."
That clear message allowed consumers to enjoy the traditional Thanksgiving feast and run from poultry only
when already full from previous helpings ... and possibly too much pie. ■
By James Arnold
Food360°

Editorial director
ghenderson@food360.com

Kristal Arnold
Editor
karnold@food360.com

800-255-5113
■

Board of Advisers
Charles Ahlem
Founder, Hilmar Cheese Co.

Dennis DiPietre
Pork-industry consultant

Thomas Helscher
Director of global
industry affairs, Monsanto

Daryl Olsen, DVM
Audubon-Manning Veterinary
Clinic Management Services

Mike Robach
VP food safety, Cargill

John Story
Grocery-industry consultant

Warren Weibert
Owner,
Decatur County Feedyard

Brad White, DVM
Kansas State University
College of Veterinary Medicine

■

Corporate Partners

■

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Copyright 2006

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Meat + Poultry - January 2006

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