A report on retail pork prices released by the National Pork Producers Council indicates wages, input costs and supply chain problems are pushing up pork prices, not industry profits. Iowa State University ag economist Dermot Hayes contributed to the study . He says they looked at the farm to retail price spread and determined its stayed fairly constant over the past two years with the exception of May 2020 when some processors were down due to COVID.

They also looked further down the chain to determine what supply chain issues are having the largest impact on higher retail prices for pork. They pinpointed higher energy and labor costs.

Hayes says NPPC called for the analysis after the Biden Administration targeted food and meat processors for their role in food inflation, especially meat prices.

Hayes says another factor driving up pork prices in the store is the slower line speed at previous NSIS plants which has taken about 2.5-percent of the packing capacity offline.