June 22nd, 2012

Hog futures dropped for a fourth straight day, the longest slump in a month, on signs of ample supplies of U.S. pork. Cattle prices were little changed.

Commercial-pork production last month totaled 1.93 billion pounds (873,982 metric tons), up 9.5 percent from May 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today. Output in the five months through May 31 was up 3.9 percent from the same period a year earlier, government data show. The USDA will report cold- storage inventories for May at 3 p.m. in Washington.

“With the production figures, and with the cold-storage report this afternoon, the general consensus is that there’s ample product right now,” Adam Stout, a risk-management consultant at FCStone Group Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri, said in a telephone interview.

Hog futures for August settlement fell 0.8 percent to 91.425 cents a pound at 10:19 a.m. on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, after reaching 90.875, the lowest for the most-active contract since June 13. The commodity is up 9.3 percent this year through yesterday.

Average carcass weights in the U.S. rose 0.4 percent to 204.11 pounds (92.6 kilograms) on June 20, USDA data show. That’s 1.7 pounds heavier than a year earlier.

Cattle futures for August delivery slid less than 0.1 percent to $1.16525 a pound in Chicago. Prices fell 4 percent this year through yesterday.

Feeder-cattle futures for August settlement fell 0.3 percent to $1.5225 a pound on the CME.

- Elizabeth Campbell in Chicago at Bloomberg.