May 6, 2009

The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) has asked the USDA to purchase additional pork, which could help boost wholesale prices and help the nation's hog producers.

The NPPC in a release said a letter was sent to USDA Tuesday (May 5) urging the agency to help the pork industry "deal with the negative effects of what initially was misnamed "swine influenza and is now known as the H1N1 flu or Influenza A."

The NPPC said the nation's hog producers were already losing money before the outbreak of the H1N1 influenza occurred, and losses have accelerated since. The group said losses amount to an average of US$17.69 per head marketed as of May 1. The industry lost about US$7.2 million per day from April 24 through May 1, NPPC said.

"Given those loses and based on May 1 futures prices, a bad situation for pork producers has been exacerbated and could get worse unless the industry gets some relief," said Don Butler, NPPC president.

A four-point programme to help producers was included in the letter. The first was a request for USDA to implement a purchase program amounting to US$50 million in pork to be used for food assistance programmes. Another urges President Obama to work with the nation's trading partners to remove all restrictions on exports of US pork and to maintain US pork markets around the world.

The third item requested is for the development of a "comprehensive surveillance programme for swine diseases that affect human and animal health." The group said "mandatory premises and animal identification would be necessary for an effective surveillance programme."

The last of the items requested is for USDA to work to keep open the border between the US and Canada to allow the movement of hogs and pigs from Canada to the US despite the recent reports that pigs at a Canadian hog farm had contracted the H1N1 flu from a worker.

Pork producers as well as packers likely received an emotional boost Tuesday afternoon after the USDA reported a gain of US$1.34 per hundredweight in the pork cutout value, which raised the quote to US$56.01. The volume of sales reported was larger than normal, suggesting that retailers and further processors may be more willing buyers at these seasonally low prices, analysts said.

The wholesale carcass price for Tuesday was still down 25 percent from the year-ago quote.