Exclusive: U.S. pork group counters
antibiotics report with online campaign
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[October 15, 2014]
By P.J. Huffstutter
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A leading U.S. pork
association will use an online marketing campaign to counter a critical
television documentary on antibiotics use in livestock, pointing
consumers to industry-funded websites that defend the practice,
according to an association email.
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The National Pork Board sent out an email about the strategy to
food and agriculture officials in advance of Tuesday evening's PBS
Frontline program entitled, "The Trouble with Antibiotics".
The industry was taking steps to "monitor, engage and respond to any
and all media coverage of this story," Jarrod Sutton, vice president
for social responsibility at the National Pork Board, said in the
email seen by Reuters.
One of those steps is to use "Paid Search Engine Optimization
(SEO)", according to the email. SEO is a widely employed marketing
tactic that aims to get a website to show up higher in a search
engine’s results for particular search terms.
"The industry will tie any consumer searches for 'PBS Frontline' and
'Antibiotics' to the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance site, Food
Source," the email stated. "Included in these searches will be the
terms 'pork, antibiotics and Frontline.' In those cases, users will
be directed to the National Pork Board and [National Pork Producers
Council] NPPC site PorkCares.org."
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Sutton told Reuters the email was just notifying "our customers and
consumers" of something they might find of interest.
Sutton, whose email outlined how the pork board was working with
livestock commodity groups and others, told Reuters that "SEO is an
emerging way to best direct consumers to accurate and publicly
available information."
Sutton and the National Pork Board did not answer questions about
specifics of the SEO effort. It is not clear when the SEO effort
would start. A Google search of these terms by Reuters on Tuesday
did not list any of the sites mentioned in the email in the first 10
pages of search results, nor to ads leading to those sites.
Officials for U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance and NPPC could not
be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.
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Search engine marketing can vary. Some companies use optimized key
words and other techniques to rise to the top of standard search
results, while others pay for ads on a search engine’s pages. Some
firms attempt to “game” search results – a practice that Google Inc
and others guard against.
A preview video on PBS' website showed a series of video clips of
farms and scientific labs and questioned whether "decades of
antibiotics in our farm animals" may be linked to antimicrobial
resistant bacteria.
Scientists fear the widespread use of antibiotics on farms may be a
factor in the rise of "superbugs" – bacteria that grow resistant to
drugs and infect humans.
In 2003, U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans to
evaluate every new animal drug based on the drug’s potential to
create superbugs. A Reuters review of FDA data shows the agency has
not reviewed the vast majority of animal drugs now on the market,
because most were approved before 2003.
(Additional reporting by Brian Grow in Atlanta; Editing by Ken
Wills)
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