Principal Solution Consultant for Food and Beverage at CSB-System
I perhaps should not use the term “Pink Slime” as somebody that caters to the meat industry, I think it illustrates a point. I was travelling for 8 days visiting my favorite meat conference, the NAMP Management conference in Chicago, later continuing to Germany and eventually back home. The entire trip was somehow deeply intertwined with truth and what we like to see as the truth. Whatever the truth is, we are no longer living in a world where we reference easily what is true and what is not and if we are not creating some sort of truth ourselves, we will wind up battling truths created by others.
Stephen Colbert coined the term “wikiality” in 2006 during an episode of “The Colbert Report” as “Reality as decided on by majority rule.” Over the past 6 years, a majority of decisions and information we are consuming are wikialities. We see videos of certain feats on Youtube, which some of us take as real. I get almost weekly an email stating some sort of fact, that I can prove false within a few minutes and some additional research. Not only private people create wrong opinions, even elected officials. If one claims that domestic policies can reduce the costs of gasoline to $2 per Gallon, they are either complete idiots or liars, but in any case, they create a wikiality that a large portion of our population believes in. The truth of the matter is that wikialities drive major opinions, forcing BPI, the company that produces LFTB (lean fine textured beef, dubbed “pink slime”) to close three plants. The buzz, the social media and the perceived truth drives a good company straight to bankruptcy. I would be surprised if BPI will survive the summer, I would be surprised if anybody in the meat supply chain will touch that stuff, I believe that nobody wants to be associated with the product and hiding is no longer an option.
In general I believe that the food industry in general has some issue with the truth. The truth is, some foods are manufactured to provide cheap nutrition to a growing population of people that cannot afford good food. The truth is that BPI provides a nutritious product at low costs. The truth is, that BPI actually recycles meat trimming that would be otherwise unhealthy or would be processed for pet food, creating a higher value. But the truth is also that nobody can go out today in the market and claim that they are in business to provide cheap foods. Another truth is, that some companies have better processes in place to prevent health hazards than others. In the result, the truth is, that some foods are safer than others. By claiming “safer foods” we also claim that other foods are unsafe(r). That is another non-starter. All these counter measures by the AMI, other associations are not really helping. Defending a cheap process as a high quality product does not help, it is just not believable. During this long trip, I met many people that had the one thing in common: They did not understand social media. They did not understand why a company would need a facebook page. I hope the BPI case illustrates it well: If you don’t create the truth about your company, somebody else will. Social Media, Blogs and other tools allow individuals more so than ever to create a positive image of themselves, they create wikialities that the public assumes as a fact. Every kid posts today on facebook content just to appear cool among their peers. The truth today is largely what we find when we search on google, when we look at our news feeds on linkedin and on facebook. Truth is, what aggregation apps such as Yahoo Livestand, Google Currents, AOL Editions and others on our IPads put together for us. The truth is no longer what is printed in Encyclopedia Britannica, because it is not being printed anymore. We need to print the truths, we need to fill the web and the world of google with what we would like to be the truth. If you are in the meat business or any other business today, you must start. Embracing the truth in the process does not hurt.
