Citing “all time high” sow prices, Bob Evans, a food processor and restaurant chain operator based in Columbus, Ohio, announced in June that it was raising sausage prices to its retail buyers “for the first time in many years.”
Sows cost over $60 a hundredweight in April. That compares to an average of $42 per hundredweight in the fiscal year ending April 30 and $45 in fiscal 2009.
Consumers pay a lot for the brand name on bacon; sometimes a whole lot.
American consumers spent US$2.13 billion on the top 15 brands of bacon in the 52 weeks preceding April 18, according to a survey conducted for the American Meat Institute. Private label sales garnered $505 million on sales of 167.7 million pounds, That’s about $3.01 a pound and more bacon is sold under private labels than under any single brand. But Oscar Mayer eaters paid $424 million for 88.2 million pounds of bacon. That’s $4.80 a pound.
Three wooly Mangalitza pigs arrived in the Tropical Wings zoo in South Woodham Ferrers, a parish in Essex, England, just before Easter as part of a program to save the breed. But there’s another effort on to preserve these pigs from a bygone era. And that plan is all about eating them.
The wooly pigs – and their meat – have a certain cachet among the well-to-do. The New York Daily News reports that cured meat from what it refers to as a “wooly sheep pig” brings nearly US$83 a pound. That’s a mighty expensive ham, but the owner of a food store called Greene Grape’s Provisions in Manhatten reports that most shoppers buy a quarter pound at a time.
Tinker with a US$3 million a year trademark and you are bound to get a reaction.
Geeknet Inc. got its reaction and a smattering of publicity after it used the term “the other white meat” in a spoof “sale” of unicorn meat on April Fools Day.
The National Pork Board, based in Iowa, didn’t think this exploitation of their slogan was funny and responded with a 12-page cease and desist order against the website’s owner, ThinkGeek, Inc. Aside from offering spoof products, the publicly traded company, based in Fairfax, Va., claims 44 million visitors a month to its website.
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Indiana police thought a drug suspect they were chasing in April in rural Noble County had gotten clean away, until a sharp-eyed officer spotted him neck deep in a manure tank beneath the floor of an outbuilding.
According to Associated Press reports, police believe the man had been hiding in liquid pig manure – and dog feces – for more than an hour before he was rescued . . .
er . . . arrested.
The suspect had missed scheduled court appearances in a neighbouring county in February and March on charges related to methamphetamines. He was treated in hospital for hypothermia before being taken to jail, but only after being shocked twice with a stun gun.
Apparently, bacon in the home is something that no foster child should be without.
That’s the message Tashima Crudup says she got when the Maryland mother of five, and a practising Muslim, was told she wasn’t suitable as a foster parent by a private company that screens potential foster parents for the state. She had already completed many hours of training.
The American Civil Liberties Union claims bias against Muslims. A complaint was filed with the Baltimore Community Relations Commission. The state government is also looking into it.
Smithfield Food Inc, and the analysts who keep an eye on it, have been caught off guard by the recent leap in hog prices.
Meatingplace.com notes that Smithfield was warning investors before regular meetings that its fourth quarter numbers will be weaker than expected, in spite of changes in the way the company is doing business.
A BMO Capital Markets analyst noted that Smithfield had still made the right decisions by restructuring its hog business and reducing the amount of debt carried on its balance sheet. The world’s largest hog producer is expected to do much better in 2011.
The Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, based at Iowa State University, has pretty much written off Canada and the European Union as players in world pork trade in the next decade.
Europe’s share of world markets is predicted to fall seven percentage points from 30.3 per cent in 2008. Canada’s share is expected to fall by 6.4 percentage points from the same year, while the United States will gain 13.2 percentage points.
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