• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, September 9, 2015

The pork industry's latest effort to encourage consumers to eat more of the meat is a weather-inspired menu planning tool.

The "Daily Porkcast," an online extension of the National Pork Board's four-year-old "Pork: Be Inspired" marketing campaign, is hosted on the campaign's site. It offers U.S. users real-time weather forecasts based on their locations, along with recipes, updated daily, that fit those forecasts. 

Seven top chefs each created a recipe for the tool that suits the weather of his or her region (chef JJ Johnson of New York City's Cecil restaurant created a recipe for the Northeast, for instance). In addition, the Pork Board created new, fall-themed recipes for the tool. 

The Porkcast is another way to showcase the many ways that pork can be prepared, including grilling and oven roasting, notes the Pork Board's director of communications, Pamela Johnson. "We wanted to make it easy for pork fans to be able to plan their menus to suit whatever is happening outside," she says. 

The board has responsibility for Checkoff-funded research, promotion and consumer information projects and for communicating with pork producers and the public.

It replaced its 25-year-old "The Other White Meat" campaign with "Pork: Be Inspired" in 2011.  

In 2014, a viral epidemic that killed millions of pigs drove up prices, but a drop in pork volume sales exceeded the rise in dollar sales, according to Nielsen Perishables Group.

But the Porkcast tool and the Pork Board's significant summer airing schedule for its "Make It Like This" TV spot coincide with a new set of circumstances. Because pig farmers built up their herds in response to the virus, the industry is experiencing over-supply that has pushed prices down to three-year lows, according to Reuters — causing some U.S. fast-food chains and grocers to capitalize on the price declines by promoting pork.