Brace Yourselves: We’re Heading For a Bacon Shortage in 2017

I think we can all agree that 2016 was a pretty garbage year. But we’re only a month into the next one, and 2017 is already shaping up to be a whole lot worse.

Because a new (non-Trump-related) horror story was just announced: the world is staring down a possible bacon shortage. I know. It’s almost too much to take.

The Ohio Pork Council – which is a real non-profit, I swear – first sounded the alarm, announcing that the U.S.’s frozen pork belly reserves, AKA the same cut used for making delicious, delicious bacon, has hit a 50-year low. Deep breaths.

Blame pork lobbyists for making the former working-man’s favourite fashionable again (no, really), chefs and corporations for putting the breakfast meat on anything and everything they can, bacon itself for being so dang tasty.

But no matter how you fry it, demand is up, and it’s outpacing supply. Meanwhile, prices are rising accordingly; pork belly spiked by 20 percent in January alone. (Note to self: invest in pork-related futures. And/or Costco-sized packs of bacons.)

Before you start rationing BLTs or going into full-on Ron Swanson mode though, there’s good news: we’ve been here before. Typing “bacon shortage” into Google autofills for similar the-sky-is-falling stories from 2013, 2014, 2015. And while today’s news presumably had many imagining a terrible dystopian future where pork belly is bartered for barrels of oil and first-borns, the president of the Ohio Pork Council was quick to put minds at ease, telling USA Today, “While bacon may become more expensive for consumers, rest assured the pork industry will not run out of supply.”

Phew.

But even so, if you find yourself staring at a fridge full of bacon strips tonight, well… Eat ‘em if you got ‘em.