Iowa Quality Meats wins Consumer's Choice Pork Awards

The Pork Checkoff has selected five new pork products as winners of the third annual Consumer's Choice Pork Awards contest, which shows that consumers appreciate pork's versatility and quality.

The Consumer's Choice Pork Awards honor retail products that score high on taste, product appeal, fit to lifestyle trends, and purchase intent.

This year, the National Pork Board received more than 100 entries from pork producers, consumers, industry experts, manufacturers and retailers in this Checkoff-funded contest.  The entries were narrowed to 10 final products by a panel of industry experts, then the finalists were judged by panels of consumers in two cities.

The winners of the 2004 Consumer's Choice Pork Awards contest are:

Swift Premium® Pepper Grill Pork Filet Oven Roasters™, Swift & Co. Hormel Black Forest Ham Sliced Deli Meats, Hormel Foods Corp. Hillshire Farm® Deli Select® Ultra Thin™ Smoked Ham, Sara Lee Foods Lupo's Teriyaki Pork Stir Fry, Sam A. Lupo & Sons Inc. Pork Crown Roast, Iowa Quality Meats

Many of this year's entries, such as the Ultra Thin Smoked Ham and the Black Forest Ham Sliced Deli Meat, were quick and ready-to-eat straight from the package.  Others, like the Stir-fry Teriyaki Pork, were prepared and to the table in less than 15 minutes.  But many items, such as the Pork Crown Roast and Filet Fresh Roaster, had longer cooking times, but due to the minimal preparation were still viewed by consumer judges as being convenient.

Manufacturers of this year's winning products were awarded with a Consumer's Choice Pork Awards golden fork trophy at the Annual Meat Conference on March 14 in Nashville, Tenn.

Plus, each of these products earns the right to use the official Consumer's Choice Pork Awards winner's seal in merchandising efforts. Winners also benefit from a consumer publicity campaign by the National Pork Board.   --  Top of page

Iowa Celebrated Chef in media

The Pork Checkoff's 2004 Celebrated Chefs recently met with key editors in Chicago, Cleveland and New York. These cities are home to the top magazines in the food trade. The 2004 chefs were announced in January and will continue to serve the pork industry throughout the year, as well as into the future.

Separately, a 2003 Celebrated Chef was featured in the March 2004 issue of Chef magazine. Kumar Wickramasingha of Ft. Madison, Iowa, described how he worked his way out of Sri Lanka and to the United States, where he worked his way up in the restaurant business. As a chef/owner of a restaurant in a key pork production area, he features meat-and-potato meals with a twist.   --  Top of page

Sows and space fact sheet available

The Pork Checkoff has recently made available a swine welfare fact sheet titled "Sows and Space," authored by Dr. John McGlone of Texas Tech University. The information focuses on space requirements for sows regarding static, dynamic and social space needs. The fact sheet is available on www.porkboard.org (click on Science and Technology, then Fact Sheets) or can be ordered by calling the Pork Checkoff Service Center at 800-456-7675 and asking for fact sheet #04725.   --  Top of page

NichePORK website

The Pork Checkoff's NichePORK Web site is helping match producers who market their pork products directly with consumers who are looking for specialty products or specific production practices. Currently, the database includes 113 pork production operations from 26 states. Any producer can become part of this database by contacting the Pork Checkoff Service Center at 800-456-PORK. Other information available on the NichePORK Web site includes answers to questions about niche pork and ways to increase knowledge of the niche pork market.   --  Top of page

Checkoff's PRRS Initiative boosted by grant

The National PRRS Initiative, coordinated through the Pork Checkoff, recently received a major boost, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Research Initiative committed $4.4 million to research in that area. Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is considered the most economically significant disease in the pork industry today.

The grant has been awarded to the North Central 229 multi-state PRRS project, an 11-state cooperative project specifically focused on PRRS. The National Pork Board has been collaborating with the NC-229 project through the Checkoff's PRRS Initiative. This collaboration is important to the pork industry, as this nationally coordinated effort may lead to accelerated tools and solutions for addressing the devastating production, health and welfare effects of PRRS virus infections.

As part of the coordination, the Pork Checkoff has a website to provide a forum for the projects. The PRRS website will serve as one of the core outreach components. Within the site will be background information on both projects, on-going and completed PRRS research, PRRS research funding opportunities and identification for potential research collaborations. The site has been designed to serve researchers and producers, as it will be populated with information as the projects progress. The site can be accessed through www.porkboard.org. Simply click on "PRRS Initiative" under the "Pork Production" menu.   --  Top of page

Japanese markets promote U.S. Pork

During the fourth quarter of 2003, USMEF conducted a total of 13 U.S. pork retail promotions with 3,492 outlets in Japan. In October, USMEF began a kakuni promotion with 70 outlets of the leading retailer in the Tokai region. Kakuni is a popular Japanese pork dish made with bellies.

In November, this promotion expanded to include national chains and five additional regional chains. Kikkoman soy sauce and Lion Corporation's food products division, which sells McCormick spices, also cooperated with this promotion. Preliminary results show Ito Yokado increased sales of U.S. pork bellies by 25 percent from year-ago levels.

USMEF aired five-minute television advertising segments, using traditional Japanese settings and a story-telling style, to promote U.S. pork to Japanese consumers. The advertising segments featured American pork steak with marsala flavor, American pork kakuni, American pork shabu shabu, American pork oden and American pork sparerib.   --  Top of page

Pork Checkoff updates PQA program

Recent updates to the Pork Quality Assurance™ (PQA™) program include the ages of people who can participate and the length of the certification period. Rather than a two-year certification period, pork producers who participate in the program now will be certified for three years. Currently, about 79,000 U.S. pork producers are certified in PQA Level III. All of these over the age of 18 will be granted an additional year to their current certification. New certificates will be issued to producers prior to the expiration of their current certification.

Companies that require producers to document PQA Level III certification have been notified that these changes are occurring so they can be aware of potential effects on their implementation processes. Pork producers launched the PQA program in 1989 to ensure a safe, wholesome food supply.   --  Top of page