Relax, All the Bacon Shortage Talk is Just a Marketing Ploy
News of a pending bacon shortage is taking over the Internet. According to the thread, high corn prices pushed English pig farmers to slaughter more of their sows. The reduced herds threatened future bacon supplies and promised to drive prices sky high, or worse, temporarily remove bacon from the meat cases of the entire planet.
Everything is going to be OK.
The scare is the product of the National Pig Association's press release, which reported Europe's pork and bacon supply is contracting fast. The release urged Europeans to order more bacon (but please choose products with the NPA red tractor logo, of course) and then bacon shortage stories spread like Internet wildfire.
It's all a campaign to get people to buy more pork, created by people who want to sell more pork. The whole story is laid out on Slate in a reassuring article that asserts there will be no bacon shortage.
By far the best news to come out of the great bacon shortage scare of 2012 were three tweets from Pete Wells, the food critic at The New York Times. Yesterday, Wells said:
I'm as bored with bacon shortage stories as I was with bacon stories. (Taking my share of the blame, of course.)
He quickly followed with:
Clarification: not bored w/ bacon stories. Bored with misconception that it's interesting to like bacon. It's like saying "I like sex."
And then today:
Judging from new followers over past 18 hours, I should write tweets that combine bacon and sex at least once a day.
Behold the power sex, marketing and bacon.
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