Five out of 5 pigs object to the National Pork Board's new slogan: 'Pork: Be inspired'

We love pigs -- for petting, not for eating. But not everyone shares our high opinion of the humble pig -- certainly not the National Pork Board, which recently announced a new marketing campaign for pork. The pork board is moving beyond its "other white meat" campaign with a new slogan: "Pork: Be inspired." The Times' business blog Money & Co. reports:

The Des Moines-based industry group, which unveiled that tasty little morsel Friday, is getting ready to throw some hefty cash behind its marketing makeover -- to the tune of more than $11 million for an advertising campaign that will include print, TV and online ads.

"Moving from a functional to a more emotional positioning, the campaign voice is proud, energetic, approachable and unapologetically optimistic about the unique attributes of the world's most popular protein," reads a news release announcing the new slogan.

"Our research shows that pork's top consumers are looking for more than basic education; they're looking for inspiration," Ceci Snyder, vice president of marketing for the pork board, said in a statement. "With its great taste and versatility, pork is the ideal catalyst to inspire great meals."

We suspect we're not alone in thinking that pigs have a lot more going for them than the ability to inspire hungry people with their flesh -- their often untapped talents include sitting on command (and looking darn cute doing it), performing impressive feats of agility, playing with dogs and synchronized ear-twitching. Plus, these interesting animals are smarter than many people give them credit for; a 2009 study showed that pigs were able to learn how mirrors work and use the reflected images they saw in them to investigate their surroundings and find food.

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Pigs in an enclosure at the Internationale Gruene Woche (International Green Week) agriculture and food fair in Berlin on Jan. 20. Credit: Thomas Peter / Reuters

Comments

[L.A. Voter]

Good -- let them throw this Hail Mary pass and waste their money, while the country continues to grasp that massive meat consumption is clogging our arteries and giving us diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

I love dogs beyond belief, but pigs are universally acknowledged to be smarter than dogs. What then are our criteria for treating animals humanely? Cruelly confining a dog is a crime; cruelly confining pigs is standard operating procedure. If your dog has a litter of puppies and one doesn't grow as fast as the others it would be a crime to pick that puppy up by his rear legs and slam his head into a wall or the floor to kill him, but again, standard operating procedure in the pig slaughter industry.

A couple of years ago HBO ran a documentary called "Death on a Factory Farm" that showed employees of the Wiles Farm in Creston, OH torturing and killing disabled sows by wrapping a chain around their necks and hoisting them on a forklift and watching them slowly strangle, thrashing and suffocating to death over several minutes. One employee even jumped and grabbed onto the body of a suffocating sow, adding his weight onto the thousand or more pounds crushing her throat.

If somone did that to a dog he would be infamous. But what could a sow have ever done to deserve such a viciously cruel death?

Yup, the meat of a dead pig sure is inspiring.