'Merchant of Drumsticks' aims to allay bird-flu fears

[Guest guest]

'Merchant of Drumsticks' aims to allay bird-flu fears

Thursday, May 04, 2006

By Jane Zhang, The Wall Street Journal

When L. Lobb heard that Walt Disney Co.'s ABC television was

planning a disaster thriller, " Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, "

for next week's " sweeps week, " he went into crisis mode.

Mr. Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, which

represents nearly all of the chicken producers and processors in the

U.S., wrote to the network demanding that it change the word " bird "

to " pandemic " in the title. He also insisted that the movie, to be

aired Tuesday, carry disclaimers such as " This movie is fiction "

and " Eating poultry is safe. " Finally, he posted a video on his trade

group's Web site featuring healthy-looking farm chickens and

developed talking points stressing that the avian flu can't be

contracted by eating fully cooked chickens.

" The virus has been in the wild since 1997, and it has not become a

human pandemic virus, " says Mr. Lobb. " We will not go unchallenged.

We hope ABC is carrying out its own responsibilities. "

Hope Hartman, a spokeswoman for ABC television, says the network has

acted " very responsibly. " Even before Mr. Lobb's letter, she says,

ABC decided to show messages at the beginning of the movie saying it

was fiction and at the end directing viewers to a government Web site

on pandemic flu. But there are no plans to change the title, as Mr.

Lobb would like, and " there are not any discussions about chickens "

in the movie, Ms. Hartman says.

With all the talk of avian flu, 53-year-old Mr. Lobb is the ultimate

anti-Chicken Little. His job is to convince the public that the sky

isn't falling, despite scary TV movies, disturbing media reports and

government warnings that the flu is headed to the U.S. (In the movie,

what Ms. Hartman calls " a reasonable worst-case scenario, " the deadly

H5N1 virus arrives on U.S. soil with a Virginia businessman who

contracted the strain from a live poultry market in Hong Kong.)

To counter the scary stories, Mr. Lobb pointedly calls the disease

the " Asian bird flu, " with the emphasis on Asian. He notes that the

government is testing tens of thousands of wild birds to try to get

an early warning of the virus's arrival in the U.S. And he says most

producers are testing their chickens before sending them to market

and have vowed to destroy any infected flocks. " People have the

impression that all of a sudden, all the chickens all over the

country will drop dead, " he says. " That won't happen. ... There's

nothing to be scared of. "

Mr. Lobb has been talking up chickens for years. In 1998, he was

hired by the National Broiler Council, which a year later changed its

name to the National Chicken Council. Before that, he handled the

council's account while at the public-relations firm Fleishman-

Hillard Inc., where he also represented such industries as plastics,

home building and coal mining.

" I have been very fortunate in my public-relations career -- I never

had to defend the indefensible, " says Mr. Lobb, whose office is

decorated with stuffed-chicken animals, a Perdue bobblehead

doll and a hen that lays bubblegum eggs.

" I can truthfully say I ate a lot of chicken before I started working

for this industry, " says Mr. Lobb. He jokingly calls himself

the " merchant of drumsticks, " a reference to the " merchant of death "

label used by the tobacco lobbyist in the satirical novel and

film " Thank You for Smoking. "

Over the years, Mr. Lobb has learned to develop quick responses to

questions about chickens, from the presence of salmonella in raw

poultry (a natural phenomenon, he says) to the environmental impact

of chicken farms (the industry now uses wood chips to absorb bird

droppings and has worked with the government to curb pollution, he

says) to allegations from groups such as People for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals that raising chickens with chemicals in tight

quarters amounts to animal abuse ( " It's not a scientific

organization, just a pressure group, " says Mr. Lobb. " We are not

going to let them make decisions for us. " )

PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, who has debated Mr. Lobb on

television, says that if avian flu arrives in the U.S., " I hope and

assume consumers will stop eating chicken by the millions. "

The avian-flu threat poses Mr. Lobb's biggest challenge so far. For

the U.S. chicken industry, with about $38 billion in annual retail

sales, maintaining public confidence is crucial. Last year, the

average U.S. consumer gobbled down nearly 90 pounds of chicken,

compared with less than 24 pounds in 1960. In a recent survey of

1,043 adults by the Harvard School of Public Health, 46 percent of

chicken eaters said they would stop eating chicken and 25 percent

said they would eat less if avian flu shows up in the U.S.

World-wide, the virus has killed more than 110 people, most of whom

came into close contact with poultry. For now, the disease doesn't

seem to have the ability to be easily passed from one human to

another. But if it mutates and triggers a pandemic -- the premise of

the ABC movie -- the government says it could kill as many as two

million Americans.

To ease public anxiety, Mr. Lobb and his helpers in the industry

scour the media for more-upbeat reports. He recently circulated

comments by Fauci, director of the National Institute of

Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who said that " it is impossible to

predict " whether the bird-flu virus will trigger a pandemic. Mr. Lobb

also called attention to comments by Agriculture Secretary Mike

Johanns who noted that the industry has taken extra steps to protect

chickens and that cooking the birds at 165 degrees kills the virus.

To show off the plumped-up " bio-security " steps taken by many

producers, Mr. Lobb recently conducted a tour of the Valley Pike Farm

in Broadway, Va., an independent family farm under contract with

Pilgrim's Pride Corp. to produce 600,000 chickens a year.

Before entering an enclosed chicken house containing 25,000 birds,

Mr. Lobb and his entourage donned cotton overalls, gloves and

hairnets and disinfected their rubber boots. The chickens rested in

the dimly lighted wooden enclosure heated by gas to a temperature of

92 degrees. Except for a door, there are no openings to the outside

and air circulation is helped by a fan. " There's no chance a wild

bird will get into this house, " says Matt Lohr, who owns the farm

with his father, . " Chicken is safe to eat. "

Which, of course, is exactly the message Mr. Lobb, who refers to bird

flu as " AI " -- for avian influenza -- is pushing. As for the ABC

movie, he's not planning on watching; instead, he'll be attending a

Boy Scouts meeting. He hopes TV watchers will be lured by a competing

show. " The other AI ( " American Idol " ) may come in handy, " he says.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06124/687555-237.stm