According to Kerns & Associates economist Steve Meyer, any packing plant is important to the pork industry right now. “It’s the cumulative effect that gets us. If we would have lost one plant at a time, even just two plants down, I don’t think we’d see as big of an impact. As troubles at other plants pop up, we’ll start to see a few things including limited wholesale pork supplies and prices increase. On the other side, there will be a back up of hogs. Producers will have some real difficulties with inventories of market ready pigs with no place to go.” There are unknowns in some of these plant closures for hog producers, including Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “We don’t know how the decisions are being made on who goes where,” explains Meyer. “Smithfield Foods hasn’t said anything about moving hogs from Sioux Falls to other plants. They have a lot of processing at Sioux Falls and I don’t know if it helps them to kill hogs somewhere else if their processing is down. That’s another bugaboo in this thing.” Photo credit: USDA Food Safety Inspection Service
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