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Deadly Pig Diarrhea Is Driving Up the Cost of Bacon

The fear that PEDv will produce long-term declines in the pork herd and add costs to farmers has sent pork futures skyward.

A deadly virus has infected pigs in 27 states, helping cause a decline in the nation's pig herd. While Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) isn't a direct threat to humans, it is a threat to our appetite for bacon: The deaths of thousands of young pigs has sent pork futures skyrocketing as farmers continue to have difficulty containing the outbreak.

PEDv was first reported in the US in the spring of last year, and does exactly what it sounds like: The virus causes severe diarrhea, which leads to dehydration. While older pigs are often able to cope, the disease is devastating to piglets, with a mortality rate estimated at nearly 100 percent for piglets under two weeks old. The disease can only be confirmed via laboratory test, and there's currently no vaccine, although a potential one is being rushed to market. Combine those factors with the massive scale of factory hog farming, and you've got a recipe for an epidemic.

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This Friday, the USDA is set to release new quarterly data on the size of the hog herd. The report is highly anticipated after the last report, released in December 2013, showed that the US hog herd declined by one percent year over year. At 65.9 million head as of Dec. 1, there are still a huge number of pigs waiting for slaughter in the United States. But that number is 99 percent of the herd size from a year prior—worse than analyst predictions that the herd would be 99.9 percent of 2012's herd size.

It might seem like a small distinction, but therein lies the rub: The quarterly report was the first time that PEDv showed an appreciable decline in the size of the hog herd, and the number of cases continues to rise. According to a Reuters report last week, a total of 4,757 cases were confirmed as of March 15. Remember, that's just the number of pigs with confirmed lab tests. Reuters's Meredith Davis writes that "hog industry analysts estimate PEDv has killed an estimated 5 million US hogs since it was discovered in May 2013."

The fear that PEDv will produce long-term declines in the pork herd and add costs to farmers has sent pork futures skyward. As the above NASDAQ chart shows, lean hog prices have spiked as the magnitude of the epidemic becomes clearer, and have actually reached their highest point in at least 10 years.

“It’s become a panic-driven market,” Dan Norcini, an independent commodity trader in Idaho, told Canada's Globe and Mail. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.” The Globe and Mail also notes that things are going to get worse: Because it takes about six months to raise a piglet for market, widespread diarrhea death for today's piglets means a shortage of fully-grown hogs for the late summer, when barbecue season peaks.

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Curiously, the disease itself is reflective of the global trade in meat products. A National Pork Board statement last year noted that the disease is not trade-restrictive because it already exists in many countries, including the UK, where it was first discovered in 1971, parts of Europe, China, Korea, Japan, the US, and, as of this year, Canada.

Like other meat products, pork is fully globalized. For example, China is the world's largest market for pork products, and last year a Chinese firm bought Smithfield Foods, a formerly American company that's the world's largest pork producer. And in December, the UK signed a deal with China to export live and frozen pig semen to boost China's breeding production amid growing pork trade relations between the two countries.

So what can be done to combat the porkpocalypse? Well, there might not be one in the first place; an Agriview story argues that higher pork prices could actually prove profitable for the industry, as US consumers "are slow to reduce their pork use even in short supply situations."

In the short term, the National Park Board has announced funding for vaccine research, as well as new partnerships across major farming concerns, feed producers, and veterinary associations to improve diagnosis and treatment of the US herd.

A vaccine is crucial to preventing the spread of PEDv, but what about the next epidemic? The point made by Agriview is telling: High consumer demand for meat products has turned livestock farming into a high-efficiency industry where small-scale farmers are continually replaced by large corporations concerned only with higher throughput. Just read this bit from the December Reuters report:

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The data on Friday showed producers had a record number of pigs per litter during the period at 10.16, up marginally compared with last autumn's record of 10.15. But, that is the smallest increase over the past two quarters.

"When pigs per litter is up only one tenth of 1 percent after averaging up 2 percent since 2003, that's quite a difference," said University of Missouri livestock economist Ron Plain.

Sows are producing record numbers of pigs per litter—due in part to improved health and feed, to be sure—but the decline in growth of that statistic is of economic concern. That emphasis on ever-higher production growth goes hand in hand with demand, and both are fueling the continued industrialization of livestock farming that makes disease spread more easily.

In the case of hogs, PEDv spreads via the fecal-oral route, which means that pigs in proximity to infected poop are more likely to get infected themselves. PEDv is hardly unique in this case; the rise of preventative antibiotic use in livestock farming is due to the rapid pace at which disease can spread through high-intensity farms.

The answer then is to focus on producing healthier meat by producing less of it, as a Nature comment on sustainable livestock argued in early March. "With education and some financial aid, farmers could improve husbandry, and more animals would survive to become productive," the authors wrote. "Keeping animals at high densities spreads infectious diseases far and fast."

Emphasizing quality over quantity would be good for humans, especially in the US. "Annual meat consumption in India is just 3.2 kilograms per person, compared with 125 kg per person in the United States in 2007, much of it from heavily processed foods, such as burgers, sausages and ready meals," the Nature authors state. "The focus should be on eating less, better quality meat."