Our world needs animal protein more than ever before. Access and affordability of healthier foods continues to be a challenge around the globe. Healthy food plays a vital role in achieving good nutrition and health, especially for women and children. This topic was a key focus of the 2021 Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue held Oct. 18-22.
Jen Sorenson, president of the National Pork Producers Council, joined a panel with eight other industry experts to discuss how strengthening community engagement and fostering greater government accountability and transparency has been shown to improve access to healthier foods.
“There’s no lack of evidence showing the importance of animal protein in helping prevent childhood stunting and malnutrition,” Sorenson shared during the roundtable discussion.
She explained why pork is a good source of macro and micronutrients and protein. For example, she shared that a 3 oz. serving of pork provides 5% iron, a necessary mineral needed for growth and development, has less than 5 grams of fat, is naturally low sodium and is packed with protein.
“With a nutritiously packed cut of meat with both macro and micronutrients and its affordability, working together to ensure that our communities of children, mothers and lactating women have equitable access to animal protein, like pork, is critical,” Sorenson said.
In addressing efforts to expand the affordability and accessibility of foods without compromising their nutritional value and negatively affecting the environment, Sorenson explained how U.S. pork production can serve as a model, with its small carbon footprint, cycle of converting feed to meat and of using manure to produce feed and the ease of raising hogs, which have high birthing rates and can be raised almost anywhere in the world.
“Dr. Borlaug was raised in Cresco, a small farming community in northeast Iowa. As someone who is a pork producer, and a mother, and also raised on a crop and livestock farm in a small farming community – we take great pride in our fellow Iowan,” Sorenson said. “In fact, we often use his words on our farms, because they hold so true as we are breeding sows and weaning pigs – ‘there are no miracles in production agriculture.’”
Still pig farmers push forward every day in the unified and noble mission to care for the animals that feed a hungry world – a growing world that needs animal protein, Sorenson shared.
This annual conference, hosted by the World Food Prize Foundation to “address cutting-edge issues related to global food security and nutrition,” focused on mother and child nutrition in low- and middle-income countries. This hybrid event reached two separate audiences, the event organizer noted, including online with 2,000 registered virtual viewers spanning 70 countries and in-person for 80 guests.
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Saving America’s Bacon from California’s Prop 12
Why One Pig Farmer Says It’s Time to Change Your Mindset
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