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USDA’s Ibach says hog euthanization numbers may be lower than ‘what we feared’
USDA Undersecretary Greg Ibach tells Brownfield the numbers of pigs being euthanized across the U.S. may not be great as some of the earlier predictions.
“The good news is with packing plants getting back up on their feet and getting the numbers growing that are able to be harvested—and farmers were great, of course, like you would expect them to be at devising ways to slow their pigs down—I really think the demand for euthanization and the animals that would be subject to an indemnification program has seriously dropped from what we feared. And that’s actually good news,” Ibach says.
Ibach says the states with the highest euthanization numbers, according to reports from state veterinarians, are Minnesota and Iowa. But he says Iowa’s numbers “are not nearly what they anticipated”.
The National Pork Producers Council, in a recent fact sheet, estimated that more than 10 million market hogs will need to be euthanized by mid-September. In a statement provided to Brownfield on Monday, NPPC said, “If supply bottlenecks are not resolved, farmers will face the need to euthanize millions of hogs over the next few months”.
Ibach made his comments in a recent interview with Brownfield.
AUDIO: Greg Ibach
