GAFFNEY, SC (FOX Carolina) -
Some like bacon on their burgers, or they even sprinkle it on hot fudge sundaes. But, soon it could get a little harder for shoppers to bring home the bacon.
"I think it needs to be cheaper," Wayne Hall said as he left a grocery store in Gaffney.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports hog farmers are slaughtering pigs at their fastest pace in three years. And the drought in the Midwest isn't helping the situation, and feed for hogs is becoming more expensive.
Which means in about a year there could be a swine shortage resulting in an increase in prices at stores.
"I realize they have to go up on the price, but I could barely afford food now," Rosemary Phillips said as she put her grocery bags in her car.
Phillips said she loves pork, but said she will cross it off her grocery list if pork prices are too high.
"There's no way I'll be buying bacon," Phillips said.
But raising pigs is part of Jim Lyle's livelihood. He runs Brick House Farms in Gaffney.
"The ones that we have here are Red Wattle pigs," Lyle said. "They are processed into products you buy at your local grocery store."
It cost him more than $11 a bag for feed, but he said because his pigs are farm raised and mainly pastured fed, right now the cost isn't that bad, but he has seen an increase in the price for feed.
"There will be even more instability in the prices next year," Lyle said.
While the prices may continue to rise, they hit their highest level on record in 2011 at with sliced bacon topping out at $4.84 a pound and pork chops averaging $3.64 a pound.
Copyright 2012 FOX Carolina (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.
Pigs graze at Brick House Farms in Gaffney. (Sept. 26, 2012/FOX Carolina)
