Beef industry blunders too much for PR alone
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Where’s the beef? Well, apparently, a lot of it is lying around waiting to be prodded towards slaughter. Sure brings a whole new meaning to the package label that reads “ground beef,” doesn’t it?
The heart of this latest brouhaha is that animal rights activists have struck again with more hidden-camera video, this time showing inhumane acts against animals just prior to being, well, killed and eaten. The irony is a bit thick, but the video raises an issue that’s being discussed across the public relations industry after it was mentioned in an article at Ad Age. At issue is how many times the beef industry can slaughter its own reputation and still survive.
Let’s face it – the beef industry has a tough job to begin with. They kill animals so we can eat them. After the animals are slaughtered, the meat that results is a bastion of bacteria, a repository for rancidness and an empire of E.coli.
As if the potential for damage on the nightly news because of some unfortunate food recall isn’t bad enough, now the industry has to put up with yahoos who get caught abusing animals, too?
The Public Relations Society of America has a Code of Ethics we strictly follow. Two of the main values are independence and loyalty. They guide us to provide objective counsel to those we represent yet be accountable for our actions. They also say we are faithful to those we represent while honoring our obligation to serve the public interest.
Tasty morsels that they are, animals raised for consumption still deserve to be treated humanely. And try as we might, PR professionals can only do so much. In the end, the clients who refuse to understand that they are their own worst enemy cannot be saved from themselves with public relations tactics.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig – or in this case ground beef.