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News reports say there will be a worldwide shortage of bacon by year's end

 

due to a shortage of feed for the little porkers because of the droughts we had this past summer

 

forget about wrapping those sweet scallops in bacon

 

I can't deal with the thought of bacon being in shortage or tripleing in price

 

RUT-ROH, does that mean the alternative white meat prices will sky rocket like gasoline when I'madinnerjacket says he'll close the Straits of Hormuz

"Gradatim Ferociter / Carpe Diem / No Guts, No Glory

 

"I hate taxes, and Communism, and inflation. Now, get to work, and remember that the person who makes decisions around here is ME." Ronald Reagan

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News reports say there will be a worldwide shortage of bacon by year's end

due to a shortage of feed for the little porkers because of the droughts we had this past summer

forget about wrapping those sweet scallops in bacon

I can't deal with the thought of bacon being in shortage or tripleing in price

RUT-ROH, does that mean the alternative white meat prices will sky rocket like gasoline when I'madinnerjacket says he'll close the Straits of Hormuz

 

Mayans were right about the end of the world. No Bacon? International Chaos (except muslims)

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farmers say it used to cost 52-53 dollars to feed a porker from birth to market

 

now, it's costing them 95.00 which is almost a 90% increase ! :shock:

 

enjoy now gang

"Gradatim Ferociter / Carpe Diem / No Guts, No Glory

 

"I hate taxes, and Communism, and inflation. Now, get to work, and remember that the person who makes decisions around here is ME." Ronald Reagan

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Much as I love any food, I love a lot of foods, and can wait out any spike in stupidity. Love canned tuna for salads but 88 cents is the max that I'll pay for the new (ish) truncated 5oz cans of SWA. My max for bacon is $3 /lb. If you pay more you're part of the problem. boycotting is a consumer's only bargaining chip. Don't be afraid of walking away.

"When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence."

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Over hyped BS.................and/or an excuse to raise prices.

 

I dunno, but my uncle raised hogs on his farm in Virginia, and he didn't feed them corn.....he fed them potatoes and other "vegetable waste material" from the farm. And that was some of the best pork I have ever eaten.

 

But that's right, the majority of today's pork has to be the mean and lean "other tasteless white meat"........:rolleyes:

"You know the Bill of Rights is serving its purpose when it protects things you wish it didn't."

 

"You can no longer be oppressed if you are not afraid anymore - Unknown"

 

SOL Member #174

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Yeah, when I worked at the kitchen at UCONN, we had a barrel and all the food scraps went in there, everything, and it was fed to the pigs.

But, I think on an industrial farm level, you can't get by with scraps and waste, there's just not enough.

 

Lets just stop making ethanol, bacon is more important.;)

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But, I think on an industrial farm level, you can't get by with scraps and waste, there's just not enough.

 

Oh, I agree, but there are other things besides corn......potatoes had a bumper crop this year............

"You know the Bill of Rights is serving its purpose when it protects things you wish it didn't."

 

"You can no longer be oppressed if you are not afraid anymore - Unknown"

 

SOL Member #174

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Did you see Dirty Jobs where he feeds pigs the waste from the buffets in Vegas???????:scared::upck:

 

One of my favorites. The owner was awesome, and had to have been drunk when they filmed it. The guy made no sense.

 

My dad's uncle raised pigs, and I remember him having 55 gallon drums filled with stale potato chips and other "throw-aways" from food companies. He would also get deliveries of ice cream from time to time, which would go straight into the pens. Those pigs must have had some pretty high cholesterol.

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We (landlord and I) fed the pigs kitchen waste from a very nice restaurant next door. Mostly peelings, outside leaves and cores of lettuce, lot's of stale bread. Only asked that they not add any pork. My landlord was queezy about raising cannibal pigs. They also got a lot of whey from the goat cheese.

"I have ... put a lump of ice into an equal quantity of water ...  if a little sea salt be added to the water we shall produce a fluid sensibly colder than the ice was in the beginning, which has appeared a curious and puzzling thing to those unacquainted with the general fact."- Joseph Black

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It all began, strangely enough, with a press release from an obscure foreign trade association. The National Pig Association of the United Kingdom, you see, wants British customers to feel OK about the idea of paying a higher retail price for pork products. They’d particularly like it if British customers went out of their way to buy locally produced pork. And why wouldn’t they?

“Vendors want you to buy more of their product at higher prices” is more or less the ultimate dog bites man (or, as the case may be, pork chop) story. But the press release’s provocative lede—“A world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable”—captured the imagination of the Internet. Not right away, mind you. The release is dated Sept. 20, but the looming bacon shortage didn’t start making global headlines until Tuesday, Sept. 25.

“Bacon Shortage Worldwide 'Unavoidable’ UK Pig Group Says” was CNBC’s headline, while CBS went with “Global Bacon Shortage 'Unavoidable,’ Group Says.” Up in Canada, the CBC offered the pithier “Global Bacon Shortage 'Unavoidable.’” The news made the Huffington Post and even the Washington Post's weather blog (“Weather a factor in looming global bacon shortage”).

Given the rise of bacon worship in recent years, perhaps it’s no surprise that people are upset at the thought of a bacon shortage. But is the shortage real? And does it even have anything to do with bacon in particular? Are we headed for a dystopian future of food lines and bacon rationing?

Not really. But you probably will have to pay more.

For starters, all bacon isn’t equal. The thing British people call “bacon” isn’t the same as what Americans call “bacon.” Their bacon is from the back cut of the pig and corresponds to what we call “Canadian bacon.” Our beloved bacon, made from pork belly, is known in the United Kingdom as “streaky bacon.” In Canada, interestingly, “bacon” means the exact same thing as in the United States, and they use the term “back bacon” to refer to what we call “Canadian bacon” and English people just call “bacon.” Which is simply a long-winded way of saying that the pork supply issue has nothing in particular to do with bacon.

The issue is corn. Drought this year has destroyed a lot of the world’s corn crop. Over the summer when all the dead corn was in the news, the devastation was portrayed in the press primarily as a sob story about farmers. But as Slate warned you at the time, the economic consequences extend far beyond corn growers and their immediate community.

That’s because corn, for better or for worse, is one of the key commodity inputs of the modern economy. The corn you eat on the cob or in the occasional tortilla or slice of corn bread is just the tip of the corn iceberg. Corn is (unwisely) used to fuel vehicles, and it’s an element in a large share of the food we eat in the form of corn syrup and corn-based oils. What’s more, the meat that we eat is substantially made of corn—a key ingredient in the recipe for modern industrial-scale animal feed. So when drought hits and corn dies, it gets more expensive to feed animals.

This affects the price of meat in different ways, depending on timing. The feedlot operators who supply the vast majority of American beef buy year-old cattle and then fatten them for the slaughter. As fattening gets more expensive, the price they’re willing to pay for the yearlings declines, so the price of cattle in the futures market goes down, reducing breeders’ profits. In the short-term, drought and expensive feed lead to pre-emptive slaughter and an abundance of cheap meat. In the medium-term, however, this process leaves you with fewer animals to bring to the table.

Hence, the “bacon shortage”—actually a global increase in meat prices as a slightly delayed downstream consequence of the increase in corn prices.

Such an increase will, of course, be unpleasant for households used to buying as much cheap bacon as their hearts desire, but there shouldn’t be any actual shortages precisely because prices will rise. Shortages arise when price controls lead to a situation in which consumers want to buy more of something than actually exists, which can lead to government rationing. In our economy there will still be plenty of bacon on the shelves, just priced high enough to deter some people from eating as much of it as usual.

And we should keep these price hikes in context. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, bacon reached an average price per pound of $4.61 in August, which was a huge leap from earlier in the summer but actually lower than the price 12 months ago. And here in the United States at least, bacon happens to be more expensive than ham, pork chops, or the USDA’s “all other pork, excluding canned and sliced” catch-all category. It’s more expensive than chicken, and it’s more expensive than ground beef. So American consumers will be able to adjust to higher prices by shifting to burgers, poultry, and other kinds of pork products—possibly even including the stuff the Brits call “bacon”—rather than breaking into mass panic and bacon riots.

The important thing is to keep the situation in perspective. Bad weather happens. Back in the spring of 2008 the world was also panicking about rising pork prices (though at that time the popular media narrative was that meat prices would lead to a surge in Spam sales rather than a bacon shortage). In part as a result of worrying too much about something totally beyond their control—the weather—central banks all around the world took their eyes off the growing collapse in global demand that summer with disastrous consequences we’re still seeing today. Let’s not allow inflated fears of a bacon shortage to distract us from more important issues. In the short term, there’s really nothing to be done but learn to cook more chicken.

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I've read live hog prices are probably going up 10 pct in early 2013. Pork prices have pretty much bottomed as farmers slaughter hogs early. They haven't been slaughtering sows so they can rebuild stocks fairly quickly once prices adjust to cover feed prices. Feed prices should start to come off approaching next years harvest. If you see sow prices drop because they're going to slaughter in big numbers then worry.

"I have ... put a lump of ice into an equal quantity of water ...  if a little sea salt be added to the water we shall produce a fluid sensibly colder than the ice was in the beginning, which has appeared a curious and puzzling thing to those unacquainted with the general fact."- Joseph Black

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