The closure of several Midwest pork processing plants is forcing hog farmers to make tough decisions in the days ahead.

Many will have to euthanize some of their pigs if they haven’t started doing that already.

The National Pork Board hosted a webinar Sunday advising farmers on how to humanely put down pigs and dispose of them. For some, it’s a last resort they’re hoping to avoid.

From the seat of his combine, Minnesota hog farmer Dave Mensink said the idea of euthanizing his pigs is no different than growing a field of corn and setting a portion of it on fire come harvest.

“Very difficult decision to make, to put an animal down that we cared for,” Mensink said.

With processing plants closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks in Worthington and Windom, as well as plants in Iowa and South Dakota, farmers are holding onto more hogs than they can handle. And with continued growth, many hogs could reach too high of a weight to be processed.

David Preisler, CEO of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association, said there’s at least a million hogs ready to be processed in the United States that can’t because of the closures, adding that the number grows by tens of thousands every day.

“Quite honestly, it’s absolutely tragic to have that conversation because it just becomes a waste of food,” Preisler said. “We have hog prices that are low and plants that can’t accept pigs. So we literally have got about 30% too many pigs in the United States and that’s difficult to deal with. We’re planning, at least creating plans here in the Minnesota, to probably put down 200,000 over the next couple of weeks.”

Minnesota is the country’s second-largest pork producer, only behind Iowa. With advisement from federal and state government, as well as veterinarians, farmers are learning how to humanely euthanize and dispose of hogs. – READ MORE

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