HUMESTON, Iowa — The Iowa Select pig farm gives its visitors headphones, because the squeal of hogs is deafening. This is either a chorus for the damned — or the sound of pork’s ascendancy.
Americans, long devoted to chicken and beef, are eating more pork now than they have in years. And brand-new farms such as this one, a $20 million facility one hour south of Des Moines, are opening to meet demand for everything from pork belly to pig ears.
In Iowa alone, meatpackers have recently broken ground on new slaughterhouses worth well over $500 million. By the end of 2018, the Agriculture Department predicts that U.S. pork production will equal — and occasionally exceed — that of beef, though neither red meat yet rivals chicken.
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