Issues Management

The night before the activist group Mercy for Animals released an undercover video depicting animal abuse on an Ohio dairy farm, producer-funded promotion offices such as Dairy MAX stood prepared.

The Dairy Management, Inc. (DMI), issues management team learned that MFA planned to release the video at three separate Ohio news conferences the next day. Not long after learning, DMI alerted Dairy MAX and armed it and its sister organizations across the U.S. with valuable information to help weather the public relations storm.

“Even though this issue was taking place in Ohio and wasn’t local to us, it was very possible that it could impact consumer confidence here,” said Teresa Wagner, who heads Dairy MAX’s issues management and crisis preparedness efforts.

Wagner put the Dairy MAX board, staff, Farmer Spokesperson Network and Scientific Advisory Board on notice of the Ohio happenings in the event they were approached by the media, consumers or colleagues. The Dairy MAX advisory board features an array of allies, many of them with scientific backgrounds that can prove helpful in the event of an issue such as this. The panel includes extension agents, state veterinarians, scientists and professors from universities and representatives from departments of health.

Wagner says the bulk of issues awareness and management results from the relationship with DMI colleagues. DMI has a team that daily monitors Web sites, blogs, news outlets and various social media channels looking for potential areas of concern, ranging from animal welfare to environmental to food safety to raw milk issues. The team also tracks more than 100 special interest/activist group Web sites.

The issues management program is jointly managed with the International Dairy Foods Association, Milk Processor Education Program, National Milk Producers Federation and the United States Dairy Export Council.

Its mission statement is as follows:
Using a common voice, effectively address current and potential issues where the safety, benefit or reputation of dairy products is, or may be, called publicly into question.