Pork Industry Pulls Academic Partnership Following Pressure, but Invests Elsewhere

America’s pork industry is winding down an $8.5 million-dollar partnership with public land-grant universities to refocus its spending primarily on ad campaigns. In emails obtained by industry watchdog the Fair Agriculture Council, under the Freedom of Information Act, then National Pork Board CEO Bill Even told Iowa State, one of the five universities involved in the Real Pork Trust Consortium, that the partnership will be “sunset” in 2025, less than two years into what had been a five-year agreement. “The pork industry has experienced the toughest market conditions in its history during the past two years,” Even wrote in the email. Reporting by Sentient and Vox in 2024 revealed details of the multi-million dollar partnership to restore trust in the pork industry.

JC Berger of the Fair Agriculture Council calls the pork trust consortium “a perfect example of the industry funding projects through more reputable entities, such as universities, to carry out its work.” Though the National Pork Board has decided to wind down the consortium, it will continue its relationship with Frank Mitloehner. The controversial UC Davis academic has been accused of distorting the impact of the livestock industry on climate change to benefit the meat industry.

A New Approach to Persuade Consumers

Emails revealed that the National Pork Board is now using a market analysis tool called the “Consumer Connect segmentation tool” to inform its advertising campaigns. While there is little publicly available about the NPB’s consumer Connect tool, one of its first efforts is a $15 million campaign called, Taste What Pork Can Do. The campaign, previewed in March this year and launched in May, is aimed primarily at Gen Z and Millennial consumers, with Instagram and TikTok accounts promoting dishes like bacon with ice-cream.

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The Pork Checkoff-funded Consumer Connect tool analyzes consumers by dividing them into seven groups, four of which are “priority segments with the most immediate growth potential.” Of less importance are three other groups, including Meat Minimizers, who are described in a June 2024 video as those looking for meat alternatives. In the video, a Pork Board executive says that although minimizers are not a primary focus, the group could benefit from messages that stress pork farming is “good for the people, good for the pigs and good for the planet.”

Data shows that domestic pork consumption in the U.S. remained almost flat between 2015 and 2025. In 2023, consumption stood at 50.2 pounds per capita, while 2024 was 50.4 pounds and the forecast for 2025 is 51.4 pounds. Export markets, which are vital to industrial pork producers, are equally troubled and likely to get worse given ongoing tariff threats and the trade frictions they create, Silvia Secchi, professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of Iowa, tells Sentient.

“Pork producers are freaking out because of the tariffs,” Secchi says, “because their export market is not going to do well in the near future.” Recent estimates indicate that U.S. pork export volumes were down 11 percent in May, compared to a year ago.

Secchi believes fears over tariffs may have led the pork industry to ditch the Real Pork Trust Consortium, which she says was not “necessarily a high hitting project with high expectations,” for one that embraces PR and communications specialists.

Secchi, who saw the FOIA documents, further points out that this communications-led approach could explain why the National Pork Board will continue its partnership with the CLEAR Center, based at the University of California-Davis and led by the headline-grabbing Frank Mitloehner.

Mithoehner, who is well known for his outspoken and high-profile defense of livestock farming, is active on social media and has a regular blog. An investigation by Unearthed, an investigative publication of Greenpeace, revealed that the center received almost all its funding from the livestock industry but had not disclosed the full amount of this funding publicly. The investigation was co-published by The New York Times.

Secchi describes Mitloehner as “a heavy hitter, not because of his background, but because he’s had a lot of exposure and has a lot of experience communicating with the media.”

FOIA emails reveal the National Pork Board describing CLEAR as “an established network” that “conducts forward-thinking research on the latest science-based information related to sustainability in pork production, which is then amplified and distributed to various audiences and decision makers.”

The National Pork Board did not respond to questions about the Real Pork Trust Consortium winding down, the new consumer campaign or the continuation of the NPB-CLEAR partnership. CLEAR Center Associate Director for Communications Joe Proudman told Sentient that while the center is not involved with National Pork Board decisions, it is “proud to work with U.S. swine producers. At a time when research dollars for sustainability are in flux, it’s significant to see a producer-led organization consider supporting work that aims to improve stewardship in the livestock sector.”

What’s Next

Secchi believes the decision to wind down the Real Pork Trust Consortium exemplifies wider disruptions of “historical alliances” brought on by the Trump administration’s “wrecking havoc” with political norms.

Other examples of this disruption in the agriculture sector, she says, include the dismantling of USAID, which paid American farmers an estimated $2 billion in 2020 for food aid to developing countries, and the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act which agricultural policy experts have described as hurting both farmers and communities.

In such an unpredictable world, Secchi says, where the relatively normal course of events is being disrupted by tariffs, changing foreign policies, America’s new health goals under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and even Trump’s recent attack on high fructose corn syrup in Coke — after corn growers spent decades arguing corn syrup is the same as cane sugar — the safest thing for the industry to focus on is getting Americans to eat more pork.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Secchi says, of the industry’s efforts to reach American consumers. Historically, the strategy was to grow export markets, not the internal market.” Between the tariffs and threat of a recession looming overhead, “there’s going to be a lot of competition” for American consumers, Secchi says.