Pig farmers may be forced to euthanize as many as 10 million hogs by the fall as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.
The mass killing of hogs could come as a result of a lack of operating meatpacking facilities, with farmers unable to sell roughly 170,000 hogs per day, according to CNN.
“As we headed into 2020, American hog farmers on average were expected to make $10 per hog. Collectively, with the onset of COVID-19, they are now facing losses of more than $5 billion for the year as there are too many hogs and not enough plant capacity to process them into the food supply,” said Jim Monroe, assistant vice president for communications at the National Pork Producers Council.
Late last month, President Trump mobilized the Defense Production Act to ramp up meat production in the United States.
“We process over half-a-million hogs per day, and right now, from what I heard on Tuesday, all plants are running but at different levels. We’re at 70 percent. If you take half-a-million hogs every day, and you’re only running at 70 percent production, 100 million hogs get pushed to the next day, and then that gets pushed back to 200 million the next day,” Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Vice President Chris Hoffman told Fox Business.
U.S. pork producers face a “financial disaster” due to circumstances “beyond their control” caused by the COVID-19 virus pandemic, the National Pork Producers Council said.
“They desperately need Congress to provide direct economic aid to avert the worst of it. Because meat packing plants have been closed or significantly slowed, farmers have not been able to sell or send thousands of hogs to market.”
The NPPC said the “only humane option” is to euthanize the hogs farmer cannot sell, calling it “a tragedy for farmers who work to produce food for people.”
“Destroying these animals and the food they represent goes against every farmer instinct,” the organization said.
