By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

PEORIA, Ill. — Pork producers play a vital role in making their local communities a better place to live by creating jobs, paying local taxes, and donating time and resources to local and state-wide charities and events. In Illinois, each pork producer provides 2.7 job opportunities for local workers and pays an average of $46,900 in annual taxes, while the industry as a whole pumps more than $1.7 billion in revenue into the state’s economy.

Pork producers also face tough questions from local, state and federal regulatory authorities, neighbors, friends and family members concerning environmental and health issues. The National Pork Board (NPB) offered seminars at the Illinois Pork Expo (Feb. 3-4, Peoria Civic Center) designed to inform pork producers who take a leading role in their communities how to answer those questions with fact-based, educated responses. NPB’s “Neighbor to Neighbor” training program – a condensed, more interactive version of their Operation Main Street initiative – provides an update on current pork industry issues including animal welfare, environment and public health.

Around 30 farmer-leaders attended the Peoria sessions, said Bryn Poliska, producer outreach representative of the NPB, who led the seminars.

“The Neighbor to Neighbor program realizes that not every pork producer is comfortable speaking publicly, and we help equip producers with answers and insights to be able to answer key questions,” said Poliska, citing Lions and Kiwanis groups among those who “graduates” of the program take pork producers’ message to.

“We will pretty much go anywhere, be it a farm operation for a group of producers and their employees or a state (producer’s) office,” she said of the Neighbor to Neighbor program.

Most questions posed of pork producers by neighbors and local elected officials concern odor, Poliska said, but also include discharge practices and curiosity about accessibility to the facility by government regulators and public watchdog groups. “They read things in the newspapers and see things on the news and have questions related to those as well,” said Poliska, who took the Neighbor to Neighbor message to six industry trade shows, including the Illinois Pork Expo, this winter.

Neighbor to Neighbor also gives presentations to youth groups raising livestock for show during county and state fairs.
“We help them to speak more confidently in front of an audience as well as their neighbors and friends,” Poliska said. “People ask a lot of questions of youth, as well as adults in the livestock industry.”

Through June, 2008, more than 630 speakers had been trained to give presentations through Operation Main Street, which is funded by the pork checkoff. According to a checkoff survey of 9,888 audience members, 81 percent left with a positive impression when it comes to the pork industry.

“It’s a great program for producers as well as our industry,” Poliska said. “We believe the more people we touch – be it an individual or a group – the better off we are as an industry. We need to get our side of the story out there as much as possible.”

Poliska said those interested in learning more about Operation Main Street or hosting a Neighbor to Neighbor training program can contact her via e-mail at bpoliska@pork.org or through the Illinois Pork Producers Assoc.