Foster Farms leads efforts to ease Avian Flu concerns. (January 16, 2006)

Livingston, CA: As the Avian Flu (AI) heads west, the poultry industry in the US has been girding its loins to do battle, less with the flu itself than with an epidemic of worry surrounding it. According to a Gallup Poll survey of 1,011 Americans from November 7 to 10, half of Americans are somewhat to very worried about contracting the bird flu. That's a big change from last summer, when an August Harris Interactive study showed 53% of 2,236 US adults polled were either not very or not at all aware of AI. Poultry companies might want to follow Foster Farms, the leading poultry producer on the West Coast, which decided to address the problem last year. What it got from a local program was national coverage.

Michael Fineman, president of Fineman PR, Foster Farms' agency, said that in late September, local media outlets began inquiring about what Foster was doing to protect its flocks. The company and its agency ran a web and phone hotline effort directed at fielding questions from consumers. Then it conducted media tours of its ranches with AI experts on hand to tout the company's established biosecurity measures.

"We needed to get out in front and control it before it got out of hand," said Greta Janz, director of marketing at Foster Farms. While the tours got local coverage, Janz said it was a November 14 cover story in USA Today on how the poultry industry was handling AI that began to ease the public's concern. Foster was featured throughout the article.

'There was, and still is, a national concern over this issue," said Fineman. "But national coverage of it changed after the local press covered it from a local angle."

Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council (NCC), a trade group, conceded that the issue is not over. The NCC announced earlier this month that its participating members would test every flock for the virus. 'It would be a little optimistic on our part to think it was behind us,' Lobb said.