Pork inventories in the U.S. rose 3.4 percent at the end of January from a year earlier as production increased, the government said.
Warehouses held 605.27 million pounds of pork, up from 585.31 million on Jan. 31, 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a report. Inventories climbed 9.7 percent from the end of December.
Commercial pork output last month totaled 2.066 billion pounds, 4 percent higher than January 2012, government data show. About 9.96 million hogs were slaughtered in January, up 4.4 percent from a year earlier, according to USDA statistics. U.S. pork exports to Japan, the biggest buyer, fell 6.9 percent last year from a year earlier, the latest government data show.
“We have stocks that were already pretty high,” Bob Brown, an independent market consultant in Edmond, Oklahoma, said in a telephone interview before the report. “A gain in pork production from a year ago and a potential reduction in exports to a major customer like Japan — all those things combined probably increase our stocks.”
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