DENVER — The US Meat Export Federation (USMEF) is getting creative with its latest avenue for strengthening the already strong US pork sales in Mexico. The group recently announced several new products created with support from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Pork Board (NPB) and state soybean checkoff programs.

Catering to the snack craze, the new US pork items are designed to be consumed at sporting events, music festivals, travel flights and more.

Some of the latest products include:

• Cones of fried chicharrones made from US pork jowl.
• Chicha-ramen – an Asian inspired instant ramen noodle with US pork jowl topping.
• Snack-Atelas – a dried ham snack.

Two of the new products, the chicharrones cone and Chicha-ramen, were unveiled at Pal-Norté, a large music festival in Monterrey, Mexico, that drew more than 80,000 people each of its three days.

“It was a really huge success in the music festival,” said Rigoberto Treviño, USMEF Mexico trade manager.

Currently, USMEF is pushing Chicha-ramen across Mexican convenience stores as well.

Already seeing success in convenience channels is Snack-Atelas.

“Last year we launched a product called Snack-Atelas that is like dry meat with pork ham,” Treviño said. “That is a snack that is with one of the largest convenience store distributors in Mexico, that is called Oxo. They have more than 22,000 stores, and the product is all over the country.”

Mexico is the largest destination for US pork, generating nearly $836 million in sales through April of this year.

Even though the market is well established for US pork, USMEF staff in Mexico continually search for new markets within the market to develop new channels, such as these convenience snacks with demand driven by increasingly busy lifestyles, the group said.