Washington - The government is buying $15 million worth of pork to boost sagging hog prices and keep food banks from running out of meat during the holiday season.
The purchase will make up to 50 million pounds of pork available to the poor.
“Traditionally many of America's food banks face food shortages during this time of year,” Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said Monday.
Prices for hogs are at their lowest prices in more than 40 years because of an oversupply. Last week, Glickman formed a pork crisis task force that would make recommendations to help the industry. On Monday, he met privately with separate groups of meatpackers, retailers and farmers.
Last month, Glickman announced the purchase of $50 million in pork for food assistance programs. The latest purchase was welcome, but it doesn't go far enough, said Steven Cohen, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council.
“We hope it has an impact on prices paid to the producer because those are the people who are definitely suffering,” Cohen said.
The pork producers are asking for some form of direct government aid, and they also want USDA to increase slaughter capacity, reduce imports of Canadian hogs, increase government pork purchases and support a humanitarian lift of hogs to Central America.
To encourage packers to step up production, USDA is requiring that the pork it's buying be processed on either Saturday or Sunday.
Meatpackers say their plants already are running at full capacity, six days a week.
“Everyone is trying to take a reasoned approach to this tough situation,” said Mark Klein, a spokesman for Excel, a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc.
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