Corporations Urged to Declare War on
Food Activists

March 26, 2001

Agriculture told to fight on activists' ground using 'attack
technologies' or face destruction
By ROD SMITH Feedstuffs Staff Editor

KISSIMMEE, FLA. -- Pork producers were advised
at their annual business meeting here that agriculture's
attackers are vulnerable -- but vulnerable to attack
tactics, not appeasement or public relations.

Activists' attacks on companies, products and livelihoods
"are not public relations problems," Nick Nichols said.
"They are crises, and they require crisis management."
Agriculture needs to use "attack technologies," he said,
quoting gangster Al Capone, who said: "You can get
more with kind words and a smile and a gun than you get
with kind words and a smile."

Nichols, chief executive officer of Nichols Dezenhall, a
communications and crisis management group in Washington,
D.C., said the attack industry is a $6 billion industry, referring
to the annual funding of activist groups in the U.S.

He said they capture this funding by creating "victims,"
"villains" and "vindicators." He said victims are "vulnerable"
people such as children or elderly people -- and consumers --
or animals, nature and the earth itself. He said villains are
companies and producers, especially ones with deep
pockets, and vindicators are activists who believe their way
is the only, and right, way, such as "huddites" who oppose
technology, protectionist reporters, lawyers and regulators
and "legislators who go Opolitical¹ in the middle of crises."

Activists and huddites get notoriety, which leads to
contributions and funding, and get to push their agenda, he
said; reporters get to write about controversy, lawyers get
clients and contingency fees, legislators get to legislate and
regulators get to regulate.

"And you get destroyed," he said.

Nichols said producers get destroyed because they don't
recognize the critical rule to prevent crisis: "To survive in any
situation, don't look like food." He explained that "you start
to look like food when you don't fight back but engage in
appeasement and let the vindicators divide" an industry or
segments of an industry.

Attackers fight with emotion, Nichols said, using "precautionary
principles" where an allegation that can't be proven wrong
becomes a possibility for which there needs to be precaution,
theoretical risks where an allegation of something that's never
happened becomes something that still might occur someday,
scientific division and politicized debate. Attackers fight
aggressively with kids and people who have been "wronged"
as spokespeople, and attackers fight globally on several
fronts with guerilla tactics, he said.

On the other hand, companies and producers respond
defensively with science and scientist spokespeople and
respond on only the local front with conventional tactics,
he said. "This is a good way to look like food."

Nichols described a crisis threshold as a line over which reason
turns to hysteria and outrage, and he said the plan should be to
attack back before being pulled over the line. When a company
or industry goes past the line, "it's in serious trouble," he said.
(In response to a question, he said a company pulled past the line
may spend $500,000-700,000 a month on crisis management
counseling and legal bills.)

In a crisis, Nichols said, it's too late for public relations, which he
called "a feel-good" strategy and compared it to "taking a poodle
to a Rottweiler show." He said attackers don't want to feel good,
don't want to compromise and want to win, "and your survival is
at stake. The landscape is littered with businesses and products
that these people destroyed."

Nichols said companies and producers under attack should attack
back by driving home the benefits of a product that "are personally
relevant" to consumers and establishing risk for the attackers by
"tearing down their mantle of virtue," i.e., showing that the attacker
wants to take away something society values such as family farmers
who produce chickens or livestock for integrators.

He said companies and producers need to gather information about
attackers, move quickly with both defensive and offensive strategies,
deploy globally, fight like guerrillas and "take no prisoners." He said
messages should be based on science but still be emotional and messengers
should be charismatic and credible. "Think about the message," he
urged. "Think about the messenger."

He recommended "protests against the protestors," including filing
lawsuits against them and using, as messengers, the same "vulnerable"
children, elderly and "Mother Earth."

However, Nichols said, "you have to want to win. You have to get in
the trenches and fight." He said "capitulation counseling" is not the
advice to which to listen, noting that capitulation counselors say
attackers will go away if one appeases them and gives in to them.
"Sure, they will go away because they got what they want, and they'll
be back in a year," he said.

He concluded with a quote from his own partner, Eric Dezenhall,
who said: "If you live by the sword, you may die by the sword, but
if you live by the olive branch, you may still die by the sword."

Nichols spoke at the National Pork Industry Forum to producer
delegates to the National Pork Producers Council and National Pork
Promotion & Research Board.