North America is going to run short of hog-slaughter
capacity sometime next year, according to Steve Meyer and Len
Steiner who write a Daily Livestock Report.
They predict the industry will squeak
by with just enough capacity this fall, but at the current pace of increasing
herds and productivity gains, next year there won’t be enough packers to
slaughter all the hogs farmers will have for sale.
The following year, 2017, two new large
plants will come on stream and then the capacity crunch will be over.
Seaboard Foods and the Clemens Food Group
are building the new plants.
Clemens, which owns Hatfield in
Pennsylvania where many Ontario hogs have been sent over the last few decades,
is building at Coldwater, Michigan. It has several large hog farmers as
partners.
Seaboard is working with Triumph Foods
to build in Sioux City, Iowa.
