Other topics covered were the effects of the growing demand for corn for ethanol production, diseases affecting today's pork operations and a quick look at what policy issues could continue to hinder production. However, education overwhelmingly dominated this conversation.

I conducted several interviews including one with Dr. Patrick Webb, Director of Swine Health Service for the National Pork Board. We covered a broad range of topics but somehow the conversation turned to trichinosis. Trichinosis? Why would we talk about that in the year 2007?

After visiting with Dr. Webb, I just randomly polled a young lady, probably in her twenties, who was waiting in the meeting room of the Plaza. I began by asking her if she could talk to a pig farmer, what would she ask? She was interested in learning how they get the pig from a live animal to the products she sees in the store. She included a really strange word in her sentence--"train". She wanted to know how they "train" the pigs to sit still so they could be cut up. Unfortunately, I don't believe this young lady would be much different than any random consumer you might find on the street.

I asked her if she ate pork? "Oh, no! I never eat pork. It is dirty and full of worms." I found the "full of worms" part to be very interesting considering that the majority of the people in this country still overcook pork. I couldn't believe a person of that generation from urban America would correlate worms with pork. Either way, it gave me a great window of opportunity to educate this young lady about the actual safety of the most-consumed meat product in the world, pork.

Source: High Plains Journal