Farmers Are Starting To Destroy Their Pigs After Factories Close


 
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Chris Allingham

Chris Allingham

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What a shame.


A wave of shutdowns at some of North America's largest meat plants is starting to force hog producers to dispose of their animals in the latest cruel blow to food supplies.

Shuttered or reduced processing capacity has prompted some farmers in eastern Canada to euthanize hogs that were ready for slaughter, said Rick Bergmann, chair of the Canadian Pork Council. In Minnesota, farmers may have to cull 200,000 pigs in the next few weeks, according to an industry association. Carcasses are typically buried or rendered.
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I got a message from a coworker asking me if I was interested in a slaughtered hog, weight on the hoof about 300 lbs. Wish I had freezer space for it. :(
 
Wasting food is bad enough, but wasting an animal's life on top of it...that's some seriously wrong s**t right there. I've been avoiding my parents for 6+ weeks because I don't want to potentially kill them, but if things get to the point where I can somehow help out by stocking their vintage upright freezer (in the same place in the basement since 1974!) I'll be happy to pry open my wallet.
 
Read an article awhile ago saying that the appliance industry sold more freezers in the first three months of the year then they did in the past three years. Home Depot here is saying delivery of a new freezer is two to three months out.
Glad we got our new one last year.
Also glad that Barb picked up 21 nice bone in pork loin chops and another pork belly when she went to Costco a couple of days ago.
 
JKalchik said:
I got a message from a coworker asking me if I was interested in a slaughtered hog, weight on the hoof about 300 lbs. Wish I had freezer space for it. :(
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I ran into him in the office. The farmer is selling these for far less than his cost, and is about ready to start digging trenches and putting them down. :( The farmer is in seriously bad shape.
 
Looks like chicken could be in the same boat. I suppose this is what happens when there's basically a monopoly in meat processing. Makes me wonder how much the smaller butcher shops all around the country would be able to process if they ran their full capacity. Obviously not as much as the industrial plants with their capacity and distribution. But at least it wouldn't be such a tremendous waist.

www.yahoo.com

'The Food Supply Chain Is Breaking.' Tyson Foods Warns of Meat Shortage as Plants Close Due to COVID-19

"As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain," John Tyson, Chairman of the Board of Tyson Foods, wrote in a letter published as an ad in the New York Times.
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
 
My wife has a friend that's slaughtering a hog she raised and is splitting it with us. I have no idea how I'm going to fit it all in the freezer. Hopefully it's not some 300 lb behemoth.
 
Dustin, market weight on the hoof should be 250-300 lbs. Figuring a 60-70% dress rate, that'll come out to a couple of hundred lbs. Left/right split, or fore/aft split? :D
 
Even though the country is in lockdown, we still have to eat. How come these animals aren't finding their way to the dinner plate? What are folks eating instead?

If freezer space is available, why couldn't the government buy up these animals and have them processed for freezing? (sort of like a, temporary, strategic petroleum reserve for meat)
 
Rusty James said:
Even though the country is in lockdown, we still have to eat. How come these animals aren't finding their way to the dinner plate? What are folks eating instead?

If freezer space is available, why couldn't the government buy up these animals and have them processed for freezing? (sort of like a, temporary, strategic petroleum reserve for meat)
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A number of meat processing plants are being closed due to the workers getting sick.
 
No processing plants is the whole problem. Like someone else said Tyson is having the same problem. Just seems to me like there should be a solution to this problem. You have farmers with a product that just needs to connect directly to the consumer. HMMMM kind of like things used to be. Im sure people could figure out a way to butcher the pig if necessary in lieu of waste. This seems like a problem that could get solved if enough attention is applied.
 
JKalchik said:
Dustin, market weight on the hoof should be 250-300 lbs. Figuring a 60-70% dress rate, that'll come out to a couple of hundred lbs. Left/right split, or fore/aft split? :D
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I asked my wife and I think its probably left/right and it's a monster. I have a smaller sized chest freezer in the garage, but i have things like chicken carcasses I've saved for stock and vacuumed sealed chunks of fat for sausage making. I had an old big chest freezer that was a rust bucket that we threw out a few years ago and I'm regretting that now.
 
Half a large hog will probably come close to completely filling an 11 cu. ft. freezer. We have a 23 cu. ft. vertical that's just about full, otherwise, I'd have been all over this, for a lot of reasons.

My question about the split was mostly tongue-in-cheek. The only time I can recall a split that wasn't down the backbone was the vet making a deal with Dad about treating a steer, the vet got part of the steer, about all I do remember is that it wasn't a backbone split.
 
Yeah, we'll be screwed. My mother in law is the kind of crazy lady that likes to buy almost/expired bread and freeze it. Make we can convince her to chuck some of that and keep it over there.
 
There's a running joke among my siblings about our Mother keeping bread bags for storing other things. She had a drawerful in the farmhouse kitchen.
 
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