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News from week of September 21st – 28th, 2026
PORK WATCH
North America's Swine Industry Roundup
A Shrinking Herd Meets Softer Pork DemandUSDA's September inventory shows producers pulling back as margins tighten, while disease detections climb in wean-to-harvest pigs.
In this week's issue...
📉 USDA's September Hogs and Pigs report shows a smaller breeding herd and record pigs saved per litter. 🏷️ Manitoba Pork warns renewed U.S. country-of-origin labeling could disrupt 3 million live pig exports. 🐖 First-piglet timing and sow posture can flag high-risk farrowings before stillbirths climb, researchers find. 
Piglets nursing on a U.S. sow farm. Source: Pork Business. Canadian Swine SceneRenewed U.S. country-of-origin labeling push raises concerns for integrated pork industryFarms.com, September 28th 2026 Manitoba Pork general manager Cam Dahl is raising concerns after the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee moved on a WTO-compliant mandatory labeling system that would require retailers to identify where cattle were born, raised and slaughtered. The effort currently targets beef, but Dahl cautions that pork could follow. Manitoba exports about 3 million live pigs to the United States each year, many as feeder pigs finished in American barns — trade Canadian leaders say earlier-style labeling rules could disrupt. Olymel opens integrated pork, poultry processing facilityNational Hog Farmer, September 25th 2026 Olymel has inaugurated its expanded plant in Trois-Rivières, Que., completing a $142-million modernization that more than quadruples annual capacity to 50 million kilograms. The site now handles pork and poultry processing, slicing and packaging under one roof, producing La Fernandière sausages and hams and most of Olymel's deli meats. The project added about 100 jobs, bringing the workforce to roughly 400, and includes an industry-first industrial battery system to ease peak demand on Hydro-Québec's grid. The U.S. Pork ReportTighter September Hogs and Pigs report numbers point to bullish supply fundamentalsPork Business, September 24th 2026 USDA's Sept. 1 Hogs and Pigs report put the U.S. inventory at 74.3 million head, down 2% from a year ago, with the breeding herd down 1% at 5.875 million. The June–August pig crop fell 2% to 34.5 million as sows farrowed dropped to the lowest for that quarter since 2002, even as pigs saved per litter hit a record 11.96. Economist Lee Schulz called the report bullish, but futures imply losses of about $22 per head in 2027. SHIC reports increased PRRS, PDCoV, Mycoplasma detections in wean to harvestFarms.com, September 28th 2026 The Swine Health Information Center's September domestic monitoring report shows a moderate rise in PRRS detections in wean-to-harvest pigs since August, along with increases in PEDV and porcine deltacoronavirus. Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae case positivity in that sector reached 26%, the highest of 2026, while influenza positivity in adult animals fell to its lowest since 2014. Executive director Dr. Lisa Becton noted wean-to-harvest sites are sometimes less biosecure than other production phases. Genetics & Breeding InnovationComputer vision detects stress-related behaviour in pigsPig Progress, September 25th 2026 Researchers from South Korea and Bangladesh built a stressor-specific anomaly detection system that pairs computer vision tracking of feeding, drinking, lying and standing with machine learning. Tested on growing pigs under heat stress, poor ventilation and Salmonella Typhimurium infection, the system found each stressor produced distinct behaviour changes. A decision-tree model best separated normal from abnormal behaviour, which the researchers say points to potential for real-time automated monitoring of health and welfare. 
Piglets on the Brenneman farm. Source: Pork Business. Balanced Breeding & SustainabilityCatch trouble early: first-piglet timing predicts farrowing complicationsPork Business, September 23rd 2026 University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers monitored 52 crossbred sows and 697 birth intervals at the USDA-ARS Meat Animal Research Center to find early warning signs of difficult farrowings. Each 10-minute increase in the gap between the first two piglets raised the odds of prolonged labor (over 300 minutes) by 34%, and piglets born after intervals of 90 minutes or more had about 15 times the odds of stillbirth. More ventral lying and frequent posture changes also flagged high-risk sows. ASF Finland: Core zone expanded along Russian borderPig Progress, September 28th 2026 Finland's Food Authority has expanded its African swine fever inner core zone to a strip about 30 km long and 5 km wide along the Russian border after more infected wild boar carcasses were found north of Virolahti. Cases now total 44 wild boar, mostly in Virolahti, with five near Hujakkala in Lappeenranta. No farms have reported outbreaks, and the virus likely entered from Russia, where the epidemiological situation near the border is unclear. Market & Supply Chain DynamicsHog producers face tight margins as demand softensNational Hog Farmer, September 22nd 2026 USDA Economic Research Service economists report August's wholesale pork cutout averaged $98.83 per cwt, 14% below a year earlier, as ham and belly values fell amid slower quick-serve restaurant traffic and higher gasoline prices. Live-equivalent hog prices, at $69.43 per cwt, were almost 11% lower. ERS cut its fourth-quarter 2026 hog price forecast to $58 per cwt and expects 2026 and 2027 prices to leave most producers at or near break-even. Quick BitesCorn rally could push 2027 swine finishing feed costs up nearly 10%. Read More Pork Business, September 24th 2026 Seventeen Caribbean nations update African swine fever rapid-response plans in Barbados. Read More National Hog Farmer, September 28th 2026 Canadian Pork Council: pork sector generates $24 billion, supports 100,000 jobs. Read More Farms.com, September 28th 2026 SDSU shares sow-feeding lessons learned from a PRRS outbreak. Read More National Hog Farmer, September 25th 2026 Molly Jones wins Morrison Swine Innovator Prize for PigmentRx medication-check tool. Read More Pork Business, September 23rd 2026 Enjoying this brief? Share it with a colleague. Subscribe to Pork Watch →Have a news story we should cover, a tip, or thoughts on this edition? Send it over. Want to reach this audience? Sponsor a future edition. |
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Pork Watch | By Action Intelligence Group (AIG) | 421 Mulvey Ave, Winnipeg, MB, Canada | © 2026 Action Intelligence Group. All rights reserved. |
