Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 10/19/17



It’s a good time to be in the pork business, a statement the superstitious (and those with long memories) might cross their fingers before uttering.

The fact is, both hog producer and packer margins this year have remained well into double-digit territory and are projected to stay that way through next year, even as five new slaughter plants come online and ramp up production between last fall and the fall of 2019. Is it all too good to be true? Maybe. Maybe not.

Vegan vitriol notwithstanding, America’s love affair with bacon seems only to have grown over time. Even though they are tempering now, sky-high beef prices over the past few years pushed chefs and home cooks alike to take a closer look at ways to put pork on the plate, including a proliferation of pork belly entrees at high-end restaurants. Also, as the global appetite for protein continues to expand, U.S. pork exports, with the help of a weaker dollar, have happily filled cargo ships.

All this demand has not been lost on pork producers, who saw margins catapult (peaking just over 60 percent earlier this year), aided by feed grain costs that calmed down and stayed down over the past couple of years. Pork processing was stretched to its limit, at times bumping up against 100 percent capacity.

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