Via WSJ:

Prices for fresh pork bellies, from which bacon is made, are at an all-time high of $1.35 a pound, 53% higher than they were a year ago. Bacon demand tends to peak during the summer, when supermarkets heavily promote the meat product—sliced from the fatty part of a pig’s abdomen—to coincide with a seasonal bump in Americans’ consumption of BLTs: bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.

The decision by North American swine producers to cut their losses by trimming their herds back in 2008 and 2009 is now feeding into cost pressures faced by supermarkets. Hog farmers were hemorrhaging money on a combination of factors, including high feed prices, a fall in global demand in the wake of the recession and panic surrounding the H1N1 influenza virus, which initially had been dubbed “swine flu.”

I demand an immediate release from the SPR: the Strategic Petroleum Pork Reserve! — Greg Pollowitz