Chuck Jolley   |   Updated: January 13, 2012

Myths about meat – they are as common as the air we breathe.  Some have been passed from generation to generation; a disturbingly wrong number have been perpetrated by people who do it simply because they are staunchly anti-carnivore.  A few of those people don’t know any better, bless their little hearts.  Some of them do know better, though, and continue to speak untruths even after solid research prove them wrong.

I would really like to run some of those myths through a Tampa Bay Times Politifacts style fact checker – the program that labels politicians’ pronouncements as true, not really true, ridiculously distorted and the ultimate put down, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Being a confirmed carnivore who is occasionally surrounded by vegetarians, vegans or the just curious, I’ve often had to answer what I think are strange and bizarre questions asked by earnest people who have been befuddled by a constant stream of factless factoids.  They hear something about meat that sounds like it might be true and, after it has been repeated often enough, it starts to gain legitimacy.

You’ve heard all the bad things that are supposed to be true about meat:  It’s widely contaminated with strains of drug-resistant bacteria that pose a health risk.  Livestock have a greater negative environmental impact than transportation.  Processed meat is unhealthy and must be avoided.  

Janet Riley probably hears more of those myths and spends more time trying to correct some of the most outrageous of them.  She’s the senior vice president of public affairs and professional development for the American Meat Institute.  She’s responsible for media liasion issue management and she’s a "member of the AMI Crisis Management Team. More interesting is her role as head of the National Hot Dog Council where this self-professed “Queen of Wien” gets to help promote the great American hot dog year-around.

 

Riley stirred the pot a few years ago with MythCrushers, a concept that was developed to identify the myths and crush them with science.  She gathered some of the top scientific minds in the business and asked them to respond to a series of questions about meat safety, grass-fed beef, hormones and quite a few other subjects. 

If you’ve been approached (accosted?) by people asking questions about meat and you know they’ve gotten a mouthful of tainted truth, spend the next five minute with Janet.

Q. The MythCrushers program takes a look at some of the ideas about meat that have been accepted as conventional wisdom. First, why did you decide to undertake this project and who worked on it with you?

A. For years, we have struggled to respond to a handful of “Urban Legends.” For many years, one of the most popular was that sodium erythorbate came from earthworms. We think that myth originated with a joke made by Johnny Carson that erythorbate, a curing ingredient, was the Latin word for “earthworms.” Back then, rumors like these tended to spread by word of mouth.

The advent of the internet meant that rumors and myths could move more quickly. Social media’s explosion accelerated this even further. And the emergence of food industry critics like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan and their books and films has complicated this further. And the final component of this perfect storm has been the advent and acceptance of opinion journalism where reporters blog and tweet and offer commentary on air in connection with news reporting.

We also observed that we were being held to a higher standard of fact checking than our critics. While a book author might make a sweeping statement that meat production causes environmental damage, when we attempt to rebut these claims, we are typically met with skepticism and asked to provide peer reviewed studies and data to prove our points.

We realized that we needed a scientific partner to act as both partner and peer reviewer for our work so that our information would be above reproach.

Q. About the subjects you’ve chosen – how did you decide what you should cover?

A. We did some polling to determine which myths were most widely believed by consumers. What we found was that the myths that were the most mature – those that had circulated the longest – had gained the most traction. Those myths include claims about hormones, sodium nitrite and general food safety.

We made those our priority myths for year one. We then decided to tackle the myths that appear to be emerging, like claims that grass-fed feed beef is universally safer than corn-fed beef, claims that corn feeding causes E. coli to appear in cattle guts or claims that modern meat production is damaging the environment and that a return to many small operations is the answer.

We intend to continue to address myths that are launched into the public conscience by certain shows, like Jamie Oliver’s outrageous treatment of hamburger production last year, which led viewers to believe that ordinary household ammonia is poured into grinders in making ground beef. We just cannot let these kinds of allegations go unaddressed.

Q. Tell me about the people you interviewed. Who are they and why did you choose them?

A. We seek out people who have both unique expertise and good communication skills. We work with AMSA leaders in determining who those experts might be. One of the first experts we chose was the late Dr. Chris Raines of Penn State, who was one of our earliest supporters and really the inspiration for this effort. And there have been so many others since then. Dr. Mindy Brashears has appeared in several videos. One expert, Dr. Jeff Sindelar of the University of Wisconsin, brought fresh produce to the shoot to illustrate that vegetables are a bigger source of nitrite than cured meats.

When we first approached experts to be featured in MeatMythCrushers, it was only an idea and it took a lot of explaining. Now the brand has some equity and experts seem genuinely excited to be asked to participate.

Q. What have you covered and do you have plans to continue the series?

A. We’ve covered general food safety, sodium nitrite sources and safety, hormones, antibiotics, grass-feeding versus corn-feeding, meat inspection, animal welfare, meat’s impact on the environment, the general idea that processed meat is somehow bad, claims that meat from one animal is safer than meat ground from trimmings from multiple animals and the notion that somehow we use glue to hold cuts of meat together.

We will be taping more videos in June at the Reciprocal Meat Conference and we’ll determine our next round of topics in the spring.

Q. After you finished the videos and issued press releases, what kind of follow up did you do to reach your target audience?

A. We use MythCrusher videos in response to problem news stories by posting links in comment sections or in response to troubling blogs. We also provide a MythCrusher presentation to our members that they can use in schools. Today, a high school class is experiencing some MythCrushing from an AMI Board member who is also handing out the Meat MythCrushers brochure.

Our Meat MythCrusher Facebook page also is enjoying strong interest. Followers continue to grow. We have more than 1,000 Facebook fans and our videos are shared widely by those fans.

Q. Now that the MythCrushers has been around for a while, have you been able to measure its impact? Are you getting the feedback you expected?

A. In the future, we hope to do some polling to determine what impact we are having. Our web traffic has been growing as has our traffic in social media. But, it’s definitely a process and we are competing in a busy online space.

In addition to reaching consumers directly with our message, our hope is that we empower our members to make direct contact using the materials. I know that some of that is happening. It would be tremendous to see more industry members use the materials in speeches to their local schools or in public meetings of local civic groups and the like. Our messages are sound and our facts are well referenced. Having materials delivered by a friend or local community member means they will be received with more confidence.

Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Vance Publishing.

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