Academics Collude with Pork Industry to Spread its Propaganda (Again)
Academics at five public U.S. universities have formed a new partnership with the pork industry to boost its profits by bamboozling consumers with propaganda and junk research. The Real Pork Trust Consortium, a new collusion between pork industry marketers and academics, is the latest attempt to do reputational damage control for an industry rife with scandals and abuse.
Rather than address illegal child labor, climate crimes, rampant pollution and environmental injustice, carcinogenic products, farmer and worker exploitation, animal abuse, or the many other unethical practices in its supply chain, Big Pork is again attempting to manipulate consumers’ trust to protect its bottom line. It’s now doing so with support from academics at Iowa State, University of Georgia, North Carolina State, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the University of Minnesota.
The consortium’s $8.5 million budget is funded by the Pork Checkoff program. Administered by the federal government, checkoff programs are among the most corrupt institutions in American agriculture. They prop up major meat corporations at the expense of farmers and consumers and pump hundreds of millions of dollars annually into campaigns to increase consumption of unsafe, unsustainable, unhealthy foods — including fast food and highly processed meats. Among recent Pork Checkoff marketing campaigns is one targeting Gen Z on TikTok with messaging on pork’s (unfounded) “mood-boosting powers.”
Through the consortium, participating universities will each create tuition-subsidized PhD programs for students to earn a degree in building trust for the pork industry. The goal, as stated in the program’s funding proposal, is to render these students pork evangelists who will address “the propagation of falsehoods and myths around pork production practices.” Presumably, these “myths” include those emanating from the plethora of legitimate studies (those with no such conflict of interest) that expose pork’s negative impacts on public health and the environment.
Corrupt academics have long served as eager accomplices in Big Meat’s efforts to dupe consumers and block progress on key issues such as climate change, as detailed in a recent report. Financial conflicts of interest are especially rife within land-grant universities in states with large agricultural sectors. It’s clear the meat industry has adapted the playbooks of the tobacco and fossil fuel lobbies to warp “research” — and public opinion — in its favor.
On any side of the revolving door between academia, public office, and major meat companies, many researchers have proven themselves loyal to agribusiness. As one academic-turned-JBS employee put it, her “primary career objective is to expand the role of animal protein in global diets.”
At a time when the animal protein industry is driving unprecedented ecological collapse and myriad human health crises, academics should help overhaul our food system, not enable its most pernicious actors.
