Nothing defines America quite like bacon. It’s everywhere you look in this great country, and I am a-okay with that! I’ll even admit that I bought a bacon scented candle a year or so ago and it was amazing until it made me too hungry too work and while writing this article, I found a store that sells so many bacon-themed items that I didn’t know I needed till now like bacon popcorn and bacon chocolate. It’s just so wrong, that it’s right.
bloggers visit a pig farm
Well earlier this month, the Alliance partnered with the National Pork Board, the National Pork Producers Council, and the North Carolina Pork Council, to take a group of twelve bloggers on a Farm to Fork tour where they were able to better develop their relationship with bacon… and the rest of the pork industry. The tour, which took the participants to Prestage Farms, Smithfield’s processing facilities, and the meat science lab at North Carolina State University, was completely transparent.
no question off the table
The bloggers, none of whom had ever set foot on a farm before, were able to ask any question they wanted, and they did. From antibiotics to animal welfare, food safety to hormones, nothing was off limits, and the same can be said about the tour itself. Though they’d never been to a farm before, that didn’t stop the bloggers from arguing over who would be the lucky one to inseminate a sow, nor did it stop them from observing Smithfield’s C02 stunning process from the kill floor.
“It’s hard to open the barn doors without any idea what people will think,” says Emily in her blog, but letting these bloggers in turned out to be a great experience for them and for Prestage and Smithfield. People are curious about where their bacon (and other less important food) comes from and it is the producers and processors duty to let them see. Hopefully in the future, more blogger tours can be done in other parts of the country and with other commodity groups. Until those are planned though, light your bacon candle, relax, and check out the bloggers responses to the tour.
Read more about all the great things that happened on the blogger tour…
- Kelly Pugliano, Eat Picks, “Mexican Pork Roast”
- Cristen Clark, Food & Swine, “Our Pig Barns”
- Thien-Kim Lam, I’m Not the Nanny, “Farm to Pork to Our Family Table #FarmtoPork”
- Ilina Ewen, Dirt and Noise, “This Little Piggy Went to the Market”
- Kelly Pugliano, Eat Picks, “Farm to Pork and Everything In Between”
- Gina Von Esmarch, Bowlicker, “Swine and Wine Italian Pork Stew”
- Cristen Clark, Food and Swine, “Farm to Pork Blogger Tour”
- Carmen Stacier, Mom to the Screaming Masses, “Pigs, the First Inventors of Bacon”
- Kelly Pugliano, Eat Picks, “Wordless Wednesday”
- Jamie Harrington, Kids Activity Blog, “Dr. Pepper Pork”
- Amy Roskelly, Super Healthy Kids, “The Farm to Table Connection: Pig Farming”
To see a complete picture of other social media interactions, please visit this Storify.
All posts are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of the Animal Ag Alliance.
