Trust is a pretty simple concept. Someone says they will do something, and you expect them to follow through. A very prominent agricultural company I once worked for espoused, “Our Word is our Bond,” and they meant it. Every day, significant transactions were executed (buying loads of cattle, for example) in a way that required little more than a handshake, and no one thought any more about it. As a lawyer, this made me a little uncomfortable, but it was reassuring to know that trust and business could go hand-in-hand.

Fast forward to today. In 2020, trust is not as easy to give, and it certainly isn’t a general tenet of how we interact and do business. I recently learned this the hard way during a real estate transaction. Prospective buyers made me an offer, negotiated and signed a contract for my house, only to back out five days later. While they provided a “reason” in order to get their earnest money back (which, as I learned, is a property-law relic that is no longer relevant or effective), what it really came down to was they changed their mind. Their word was not their bond, so my house is back on the market. This scenario, my real estate agent tells me, is happening more and more every year. It seems that even a heavily documented process like buying property no long carries the significance that it once did.

Now I’m not going to make a generalization of society based on this recent experience, but it is probably safe to say that people today, while having more information at their fingertips, likely trust others less than they used to. And maybe it is even fair to say that a lot of consumers don’t value established norms the way they used to.

Pig farming, while rooted in tradition, has changed a lot of its own norms in the last several decades. Family farms do things at which previous generations would scoff. We house pigs differently to protect them from disease and the environment. We structure our industry in ways that makes it sometimes difficult to understand who the real owner, or responsible party is.

We do these things for very good reasons, but put yourself in the shoes of the consumer, who simply doesn’t understand.

They don’t grasp how large locked barns behind gates and away from public eyes exist to create a biosecurity protocol that protects pig health. Most consumers aren’t business owners, and have no frame of reference for how complicated tax and business structures protect family legacies. They can’t wrap their heads around how the large “factory farms” they rail against are family owned and operated.

Yet we ask: How dare anyone question the healthfulness and safety of our products when we feed the same food we put in the supply chain to our own families? How dare activists and animal lovers not trust that we take care of our animals because it is the right thing to do? And how dare those who care about the environment think that we are causing climate change?

Let’s flip the script. How dare WE be offended by someone asking questions? Admittedly, not every question comes from someone who simply wants to understand. We are challenged and questioned by people who would prefer to see the meat industry disappear completely. That’s a separate issue that we must also tackle, but for now, let’s focus on those who only seek to improve their knowledge.

Trust must be earned in 2020 more than ever, and we can’t expect the general public to trust us without question. The good news is, those consumers who have questions don’t have to rely on blind trust — we can back up our answers with proof. Industry programs like Pork Quality Assurance Plus, Transport Quality Assurance, PQA Site Assessments and the Common Swine Industry Audit can help verify that our industry does what it says it will do to care for our animals. Environmental audits and carbon footprint calculators are great tools to demonstrate our dedication to taking care of the earth and continuously improving our practices. However, we have to not only be willing to use these tools on-farm, but to share the results broadly. Those are the table stakes for participating in a global food industry.

Trust…but verify

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