‘T’ of BLT Fame Brings Home Bacon
Late summer, and a person’s fancy turns to tomatoes, the fresh, home-grown, farm stand kind. And that’s good news for hog farmers.
No, tomatoes still grow on vines, not in a pen. But a national desire to bury those tomatoes in a sandwich with bacon, lettuce and mayonnaise moves lots of pork this time of year.
In fact, a multibillion-dollar market rides piggy back--or rather piggy belly--on the seasonal gap between hog slaughter and the demand for bacon in late summer.
“That’s the reason that a storage market exists in pork bellies,” said Chuck Levitt, senior meat analyst for Alaron Trading Corp., a Chicago-based futures company.
The market in frozen pork bellies helps determine what farmers get for hogs, and what shoppers pay for bacon, which is pork bellies that have been cured, smoked, sliced, and cooked.
Right now, it’s hard to tell where prices are heading on either end.
Farmers are producing hogs in record numbers, adding tons of pork to the mountain of beef and chicken already out there.
And consumers are indulging themselves at fast food outlets with bacon-laden chicken sandwiches and cheeseburgers.
The extra push from BLT season might help the year be even less lean in more ways than one.
Information Resources Inc., a Chicago-based marketing research and software firm, says shoppers buy $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion worth of bacon each year.
For Oscar Mayer Food Corp., the largest-selling brand, sales typically rise 20% in August and September, said company spokeswoman Jean Cowden.
Supermarkets sold an average of $24 million worth of bacon a week in the five weeks ended last Sept. 11, the highest-volume period of the year, said Nielsen North America research of Northbrook, Ill.
The summer sales spurt typically mean that bacon slicers, as the processors are known, start pulling frozen bellies out of warehouses because there aren’t enough fresh ones. With so much pork around, however, the frozen ones aren’t moving as quickly.
Bacon producers would rather have fresh bellies. The frozen ones pick up freezer burn, they shrink, and they need to be thawed.
As a result, frozen belly prices have tumbled. They peaked in February at about 59 cents a pound, but dipped below 30 cents in July, for a two-year low. It’s unclear where they are currently headed.
Bacon was at $2 a pound in July, according to Labor Department surveys.
For $2 a pound, shoppers get a heavy dose of salt and fat, a smidge of protein, and no fiber, vitamins or minerals to speak of.
But no food label can quantify the feeling when you bite into three layers of crispness for a soft, creamy tomato inside, the salve of mayonnaise on a palate zinged by the caustic saltiness of the bacon and the cool, mild acid of the tomato.
