Text PorkCrisis for breaking pig news
Pork Crisis Alerts, developed by the US government-owned National Pork Board (NPB), has developed the service to help pork producers stay abreast of critical news if a pork-related emergency is declared. Now, pig farmers across the US have a resource at their disposal that will alert them to potential catastrophes that could affect their business.
“Every day, America’s pork producers are busy on their farms and may not always have immediate access to information that could impact their operation,” says Derrick Sleezer, NPB president and a pig farmer from Cherokee, Iowa.
“Disease outbreaks and other emergency situations can spread quickly, so America’s pig farmers need a news service to notify them immediately and enable them to take early action to safeguard their farms.”
'Tremendous' response
The text service will help pork producers quickly gain access to information that can help to protect their farm and ultimately protect the pigs on their farms.
Despite the service only being launched on 11 January, NPB spokeswoman Cindy Cunningham said the response from pork producers had been “tremendous”. And with 65,000 pork producers in the US, Cunningham said the NPB’s “very big goal” was to sign up 20,000 farmers to the service by the end of 2016.
Pork producers in the US can sign up to the text alert system by texting PorkCrisis to 97296.
“I encourage all pork producers and farm employees to opt-in to receive these important alerts,” added Sleezer. “The program is like insurance in the sense that, while we hope we never need it, it is reassuring to have state-of-the-art communications resources at our fingertips.”
