Pork just changed its slogan from the famous, effective “Pork: the other white meat” to “Pork: be inspired.”

We here at elephant don’t advocate for veganism, or, generally, any one point of view. We’re about informing choices, and respect that you, our readers, will decide what you want to do in good conscience and health, yourself.

We do advocate against marketing bullsh*t. Killing animals for our pleasure has little to do with inspiration—and if the animal hails from a factory farm, it’s led a short, miserable life of torture. Don’t support factory farms, please, whether at a ballpark, bbq, restaurant or the grocery.

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NPR has the full report. Excerpt:

The board will spend more than $11 million to roll out the campaign in March and April. It will include national print and broadcast advertising, public relations, social media and foodservice marketing. Online advertising will begin March 7, and national television ads will begin April 11. Print ads will also begin running in food and lifestyle publications in April.

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“I can see them trying to expand on the market,” he said. “We are exporting 25 percent of the product now and we need to maintain the export market but also need to ramp up consumption here in the U.S.”

Via PETA:

In the September 1976 issue of the trade journal Hog Farm Management, John Byrnes advised: “Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory.”

Today’s pig farmers have done just that. As Morley Safer related on 60 Minutes:

This [movie Babe] is the way Americans want to think of pigs. Real-life “Babes” see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they can’t even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits.

On September 17, 2008, the Associated Press reported on a cruelty investigation performed by PETA at a pig farm in Iowa. The

The video, shot by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, shows farm workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods into sows’ hindquarters.…

At one point in the video, workers are shown slamming piglets on the ground, a practice designed to instantly kill those baby pigs that aren’t healthy enough. But on the video, the piglets are not killed instantly, and in a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. The video also shows piglets being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia.

See also: 2010 HSUS investigation; 2009 MFA investigation; When Pigs Cry; photos.

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Two videos: image, reality: