December 31, 2013

The National Pork Board announced in late November that it would convene an industry task force to consider a wide range of consumer issues, including animal care, sustainable pork production and other challenges to define a future vision for the industry and the Pork Checkoff.

Beginning this month, the 16-member panel will embark on a year-long process to review research, market data and opinions of industry leaders, and then set a strategic vision for the industry through 2020. The primary goal of the task force is to assess the Pork Checkoff's role in an ever-changing world and set the priorities that can help pork producers better meet customer needs.

In 2009, the Board's current five-year strategic plan was unveiled and will be complete next year. Through that process, the Pork Checkoff defined three critical issues: protecting a producer's freedom to operate, enhancing US and international consumer demand for pork and making US pork producers more competitive in the global marketplace.

One of the issues that may arise during the planning process is a perceived need for a pork quality grading system in the US. The Pork Board's vice president of science and technology Paul Sundberg said earlier this year that research on pork quality would be a larger focus of Checkoff investment in 2014 and 2015.

He described the early conversation on pork quality as an effort to "raise the tail end of the bell curve." The Pork Board's efforts to communicate proper cooking of pork continue, as well, but with a goal of helping consumers better understand how to best cook various cuts of pork.

Even so, there is no pork quality grading system in the US akin to that utilised in the beef industry, differentiating on a quality basis the merits of one carcass from another. And because of that, there is no incentive, economically speaking, for producing a higher quality carcass.

A 2013 study conducted by Kansas State University economists Glynn Tonsor and Ted Schroeder concluded that the lack of a system has caused an "economically significant variability in pork quality present in retail meat counters," and that the industry currently has a very limited understanding of consumer preferences related to pork.

The study also noted that the industry currently lacks the ability to accurately measure quality in "an acceptable way that is highly associated with end-user value and that could facilitate further exchange of quality and associated pricing information with in the industry's supply chain."