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"Swine Flu? No Word of It at Pork Expo"

I was surprised when I heard that a Washington Post reporter was interviewing attendees at the World Pork Expo (WPX) yesterday.  I quickly assumed that the reporter was on a mission to link the causes of "Swine Flu" with the Pork Industry.

On the contrary, the article that appeared in today's Washington Post was fair and interesting.  

It is great when a major publication is able to get their facts straight and even show a little sympathy for the pork industry:

Pig farming is in an economic downturn that predates the nation's current one. H1N1 is just piling on.

"I wish I had better news for you," Don Butler, president of the National Pork Producers Council, said Wednesday as the three-day event opened. His news was that over the next six months, enough farmers would go out of business to shrink the sow herd -- the swine industry's four-legged engine -- by about 5 percent.

The pork industry has had six quarters in which production costs were greater than market prices. Business was looking up this spring until the new flu strain emerged in late April. Now, producers can expect to lose $11.16 on every hundred pounds of pig they sell, nearly the mirror image of the $11.36 profit they made in 2006, said Neil Dierks, another official of the council.

"We can't lock in a profit until well into next year, and the problem is getting from here to there," Dierks said.

Pig farmers can't just hold on to their animals and wait until the price improves. The animals get too big. In the mechanized world of pork production, animals go to slaughter when they are about 270 pounds. Above 320 pounds, butchering becomes a custom job -- with the carcass sold at a commensurate discount. Feed the animals an extra year, and many will be pushing a half a ton and loaded with fat -- not the pig of choice for contemporary American diets.