Meat Institute Privacy Policy

1. How We Collect Information

We may collect information about you by the following means:

• Directly from you, when you provide information to us or interact with us or our affiliates;
• Automatically from you, when you utilize or interact with our Services;
• From online advertising companies who may share information about the marketing and advertisements you have seen or clicked on, and from social networks and other sources of publicly available data;
• From other third party sources that provide consumer data, such as information about your interests, demographic information, and marketing inferences.

2. Information We Collect

In order to better provide you with our Services, we may collect the following categories of information:

• Contact information and any other information you choose to include when you communicate with us via e-mail, mail, phone or other channels;
• Profile and member information, such as a username and password, your name, e-mail address, job title, phone number, location, and usage and member preferences, which may include signing up to some of our Services or communications from us or when you register for a member account (a “Meat Institute Account”);
• Device information when you utilize our technology platforms, including as model, serial number, device location, usage data, and operating information;
• Form information in response to questions we may send you through the Services, including for feedback and surveys;
• User Content you may provide to publicly post via the Services (e.g., comments);
• Online User Activity described in the next section; and
• Biographical information when you inquire about or apply for a position with us.

Some of this information may be collected by external parties on our behalf.

If you provide us with information regarding another individual, you represent that you have that person’s consent to give us his or her information and to permit us to use the information in accordance with this policy.

3. Online User Activity, Cookies and Information Collected by Other Automated Means

When you interact with the Services, certain information about your use of our Services is automatically collected. This includes:

• Usage Details about your interaction with our Services (such as the date, time, and length of visits, and specific pages or content accessed during the visits, search terms, frequency of the visits, referring website addresses);
• Device Information including the IP address and other details of a device that you use to connect with our Services (such as device type and unique device identifier, operating system, browser type, mobile network information, and the device's telephone number);
• Location information where you choose to provide the website with access to information about your device’s location;
• Unique Identifiers when you use or access the Services. We may access, collect, monitor, or store one or more “Unique Identifiers” on your device and/or remotely, such as universally unique identifier (“UUID”). A Unique Identifier may remain on your device persistently, to help you log in faster and enhance your navigation through the Services. Some features of the Services may not function properly if use or availability of Unique Identifiers is impaired or disabled.
• Log File Information. When you use our Services, we may receive log file information such as your IP address, browser type, access times, domain names, operating system, the referring web page(s), pages visited, location, your mobile carrier, device information (including device and application IDs), search terms, and cookie information. We receive log file data when you interact with our Services, for example, when you visit our websites, sign into our Services, or interact with our email notifications. The Meat Institute uses log file data to provide, understand, and improve our Services, and to customize the content we show you. The Meat Institute may link this log file to other information the Meat Institute collects about you via the Services.
• Public Information. The Meat Institute may also collect information about you from publicly available sources. Information you make publicly available in any public or open forum, such as on social media networks, may be considered public information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy, and may be accessed and collected by the Meat Institute. Please be aware that any content or information you share with or provide to third parties using or related to your use of the Services is neither private, nor confidential. The Meat Institute is not responsible for any content or information you post or share with third parties. If you do not wish for certain information to be public, please do not share it.
• Site usage information. We collect information about your interaction with the Services, including the resources that you access, pages viewed, how much time you spent on a page, and how you reached our website.
• Much of this information is collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies, which may be operated by our partners who assist us in serving ads or providing other services to you. For more information, please review our Cookie Policy.

You may be able to opt out tracking by cookies or control how information collected by cookies is used via a number of means, as described in our Cookie Policy.

Note that our Services do not respond to browser do-not-track signals.

4. How We Use Your Information

We may use the information we collect from you for the following purposes, to:

• Provide our Services to you, including to maintain your membership, manage any purchases or transactions, and other important notices;
• Respond to your requests, questions and comments and provide member support;
• Monitor the performance of our Services including metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, and demographic patterns;
• Interact with you, including to notify you regarding membership, events, services, and promotions that may be of interest to you and inform you about important changes to this Privacy Policy, our Terms or other policies;
• Tailor the content we display to you in our Services and communications, including advertising, and offer products and services that we believe may be of interest to you;
• Manage, operate, and improve the Services and grow our organization, including understanding our customer base and the effectiveness of our marketing, events, promotional campaigns, and publications, and diagnose or fix technology problems;
• Evaluate, recruit, and hire personnel;
• Comply with legal requirements and industry standards, detect, investigate, and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be fraudulent or illegal, and protect the rights of NAMI, you, or others.

We may use and share information in an aggregated or de-identified manner at our discretion, including for research, analysis, modeling, marketing, and improvement of our Services.

5. How We Share Your Information

• Meat Institute Personnel. The Meat Institute’s personnel may have access to your information as needed to provide and operate the Services in the normal course of business. This includes information regarding your use and interaction with the Services.
• Service Providers. We may share your information with service providers that we believe need the information to perform a technology, business, or other professional function for us such as billing and collection, IT services, maintenance and hosting of our Services, payment processors, marketing partners, accounting, auditing, and tax services, and other professional services. We may share your personal information with our Service Providers for the purpose of providing the Services. The information we share to our Service Providers may include both information you provide to us and information we collect about you, including Personal Data and information from data collection tools like cookies, web beacons, log files, Unique Identifiers, and location data. The Meat Institute takes reasonable steps to ensure that our Service Providers are obligated to reasonably protect your information on the Meat Institute’s behalf. If the Meat Institute becomes aware that a Services Provider is using or disclosing information improperly, we will take commercially reasonable steps to end or correct such improper use or disclosure.
• Analytics. We partner with analytics providers, such as Google Analytics, who collect information via tracking technologies on our websites to assist us with measuring visits and traffic on our websites so we can measure and improve the performance of the sites.
• Advertising. We partner with third parties who assist us in serving advertising regarding the Services to others who may be interested in the Services. These third parties may use tracking technologies on our Meat Institute website to collect or receive information from the Services and elsewhere on the internet and use that information to provide measurement services and target ads. Third parties may allow other companies to access information about you so that they may market other products you may be interested in.
• Social Media. If you interact with us on social media platforms, the platform may be able to collect information about you and your interaction with us. If you interact with social media objects on our Services (for example, by clicking on a Facebook “like” button), both the platform and your connections on the platform may be able to view that activity. To control this sharing of information, please review the privacy policy of the relevant social media platform.
• Affiliates. We share information with other entities in our corporate family (affiliates include, National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, American Meat Conference, the Foundation for Meat & Poultry Research & Education, Meat Import Council of America, the Leather and Hide Council of America, Protein Pact, and The Market Works) for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy.
• Corporate Event. We reserve the right to transfer to another entity or its affiliates or service providers some or all information about you in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, acquisition, sale of assets or any line of business, change in ownership control, or financing transaction. We cannot promise that an acquiring party or the merged entity will have the same privacy practices or treat your information the same as described in this Policy.
• Legal. We share information where necessary to comply with applicable law, to respond to requests from law enforcement agencies or other government authorities or third-parties, as permitted by law and without your consent when it is necessary to protect our customers, employees, or property; in emergency situations; or to enforce our rights under our terms of service and policies.

6. How We Protect and Store Your Information

As a general rule, we keep your data for only as long as it is needed to complete the purpose for which it was collected or as required by law. We may need to keep your data for longer than our specified retention periods to honor your requests, including to continue keeping you opted out of marketing emails, or to comply with legal or other obligations.

We use a combination of physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect the information we collect through the Services. While we use these precautions to safeguard your information, we cannot guarantee the security of the networks, systems, servers, devices, and databases we operate or that are operated on our behalf.

If you use our Services outside of the United States, you understand that we may collect, process, and store your personal information in the United States and other countries.

7. Your Privacy Options

You may have certain choices when it comes to how we collect and use your information:

• Account Information. Please visit the My Account page to update your information and payment method.
• Email Marketing. If at any time you no longer wish to receive marketing communications from us, you can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email or email us at marketing@meatinstutite.org.
• Online Activity Tracking and Interest-Based Advertising. You have several options to either prevent our collection of information regarding your online activity, or prevent third parties from using such information from being used for interest-based advertisements:
  • o You may be able to set preferences or block tracking across the internet by a particular third party by interacting directly with the third parties who conduct tracking through our Services by following the links provided in the Cookie Policy.
  • o You can usually modify your browser setting to disable or reject cookies across the internet. Note that if you delete your cookies or if you set your browser to decline cookies, some features of our website or Services may not function properly or be available.
  • o If you are visiting the Services from a mobile device, the operating system of the device may offer you options regarding how the device collects and uses your information for interest-based advertising. Click here for more information.
  • o Visit http://www.networkadvertising.org or http://www.aboutads.info to learn more about your options for opting out of interest-based advertising. Please note this does not opt you out of being served ads.
• Disclosure to Third Parties for Marketing Purposes. You may opt-out of disclosure of your information to third parties who offer products and services you may be interested in by emailing us at privacy@meatinstitute.org.

8. Children’s Information

We do not knowingly or intentionally gather Personal information about children who are under the age of 16. If a child has provided us with Personal Information, a parent or guardian of that child may contact us at privacy@meatinstitute.org to have the information deleted from our records. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected the Personal Information of a child under 16, or equivalent minimum age depending on jurisdiction, we will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible and cease the use of that information in accordance with applicable law.

9. Privacy Rights

Certain jurisdictions may provide privacy rights to individuals with respect to the collection and use of personal information that we have collected. For example, you may have the right to request that we: (i) disclose to you any personal information that we have about you; (ii) correct or delete personal information that we have about you (subject to certain exceptions); or (iii) not disclose or sell your information to a third party (excluding qualified service providers). If you believe that you have additional rights under the laws of your state, please contact us at privacy@meatinstitute.org and we will assess your request in accordance with applicable law.

10. Updates to This Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Policy from time to time. The “Effective Date” at the top of this page indicates when this Privacy Policy was last revised. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information described in this Policy. If we make any material changes, we will provide notice of such changes on the pertinent website for a reasonable period of time (which we estimate will be approximately two weeks). We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically, especially if you don’t visit the Services regularly.