You may soon have to cough up a lot more bacon if you want to buy bacon. A mysterious virus has been killing great numbers of piglets since it was first discovered in the U.S. herd in April, cutting into the supply of pork and pushing prices way up.
As Fox Business reporter Gabrielle Karol writes, the source of the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus — PED for short — is still unclear. But its symptoms aren't. Piglets infected with PED experience diarrhea and vomiting violent enough to kill them. Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed only about 400 cases of the disease in the lab, its toll has already been estimated in the hundreds of thousands.
As a result, pork price futures have skyrocketed to historic levels, with hundredweights of pork going for about $105 in recent trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. USDA data show that the same amount of pork went for $78 in March, before the virus hit.
Prices for pork bellies, which are cured into bacon, have risen particularly fast. On Tuesday, the wholesale price of a hundred pounds of fresh pork belly passed $189 — 5 percent more than it was just five days earlier and apparently at or near all-time highs. Pork bellies made headlines back in 2010 for soaring to a then-record $1.35 a pound — or $135 for a hundredweight — which now seems remarkably low.
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