"The Other White Milk" Controversy

So I don't post for a couple of days 'cause I'm trying to get some work done and I almost miss a minor pig-related scandal. Thanks to my man Sean I heard on Thursday that an Ohio-based blogger known as "The Lactivist" received a cease-and-desist order from the attorneys for the National Pork Board because she was selling t-shirts that referred to breast milk as "the other white milk." The outrage at a major industry picking on a local activist spread pretty quickly through the interweb, so much so, in fact, that when I returned to "The Lactivist" today I found "an update on the pigsteria," as she puts it. Turns out that she has received an apology from the CEO of the National Pork Board, adding that they are hoping to work toward a resolution of their dispute.

This "controversy" led me to something even more interesting, a couple of mentions that the National Pork Board purchased the slogan "The Other White Meat" from the National Pork Producers' Council for the whopping sum of $60 million! Apart from the fact that a slogan sold for so much money, there are questions about the transparency of the deal and the use to which the funds will be put by the NPPC. As the blogger Parke Wilde at "U.S. Food Policy" has noted here, the NPPC can lobby, something the Pork Board cannot do as a mandatory federal checkoff program. Clearly there is more to be learned about the politics of pork...