Go pork! I’m rooting for you. Especially as I gobble up some al pastor tacos, and when I (rarely) eat an expertly prepared pork chop.

It’s been some extremely tough sledding of late for the pork industry, as it is now for a contracting broiler complex and has been for a historically contracted cattle market.

All those markets are cyclical, of course, and all go through downturns. But the pain, perhaps, isn’t necessarily distributed equally. Broilers will turn around quickly. The cattle market is ready for a boom. As it is, Americans are willing to pay more for a chicken breast than they wlll for a pork chop, and they’ll pay almost anything for a good ribeye steak, even to feel good in iffy economic times.

As California’s Prop 12 measure kicks in and adds yet another layer of costs to dig out from one of its worst production years ever, pork hasn’t (as of early August, at press time) been getting much help from the high pricing retailers had set against far lower wholesale prices. And Americans haven’t seen the value proposition to boost pork consumption, an issue that preceded and will likely outlast the impacts of Prop 12.

It’s been decades, after all, that per-captia pork consumption has been stuck at about 50 pounds, firming its position in third place behind continuously rising chicken and beef (also in decline). In between a typical checkdown item like chicken and a pay-up product like beef, though, pork seems stuck in the middle, where consumers tend to balk at its price increases.

Riffing off the health attributes of poultry, the notorious “Pork: The Other White Meat” campaign moved the needle significantly in the late 80s, but the industry’s shift to a leaner hog has made it more difficult to give consumers the best pork eating experience. Even USDA’s move to lower the safe internal temperature hasn’t seemed to help, more than a decade hence.

Somewhat ironically, aside from support from exports, a pre-Prop 12 buying spree helped spur a mid-year market rally, showing the pull of the Californian market, which consumes some 13% of U.S. pork production. And while the investments by major producers and processors to provide compliant fresh pork will grow the scale at which otherwise niche pork can potentially be marketed for premiums, those premiums might be shortlived.

Sure, consumers are increasingly aware of marketing around purported animal welfare initiatives. But as farmers discovered when forced to produce cage-free eggs, such premiums erode as more powerful factors like price, taste and eating experience eventually win out.

California’s voters either understood what they voted for or didn’t. The result, nonetheless, is a mandated protocol that introduces production inefficiencies, the enemy of a commodity industry meant to feed people inexpensively. Whether they can produce enough Prop 12 fresh pork products that help inspire more consumption and lasting premiums is doubtful.

If anything, Prop 12’s exemption of cooked/further processed product could inspire more innovation to market what otherwise would be noncompliant pork. And, heck, any kind of inspiration for pork is a good thing.

Editor's note: This article ran as the Editorial in the September issue of Meatingplace.

Ifs, ands, and butts

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