Better Pig Out Now!!

(New York, New York)-Talk about a rude awakening. This is the kind of story no one wants to wake up to in the South. A British pork farming group says a worldwide shortage of bacon, coupled with a marked increase in prices next year is unavoidable. 

If you can't "wrap your head" around that, the UK's National Pig Association says pig herds in the European Union are declining rapidly, and that the trend is the same around the world.

Morning Staple In Jeopardy of Disappearing Right Off Your Dinner Plate. AP Photo

The Financial Times, quoted in a Huffington Post article, says this past season's North American and Russian droughts have created spikes in grain prices, which are used to feed animals. Some American farmers have started to get creative in how they feed their farm animals, including one farmer who says he fed his cows candy so they could survive in the drought.

The Pig Association says in a release that the US government has started a pork-buying program in order to keep pig farmers in business, while Chinese officials are putting pork into cold storage in order to help stave off shortages during 2013.

The release insists prices could go up around the world by more than 30 percent. It's a "porker" of of story a lot of bacon lovers around the world doesn't get any traction.  

Meantime, better start stocking up now.  Glad I remember my mother always told me bacon freezes. Note to self: start stockpiling now.