Fake News Alert: No, There's Not A Bacon Shortage

In between the never-ending headlines about the Trump administration, you may have noticed an upsurge in panicky coverage about a bacon shortage. A USDA report said the country's frozen pork belly inventory was down to 17.8 million pounds from 35 million pounds last year, but the truth is that pork belly frozen reserves are simply backup bacon — there is no bacon shortage.

"To imply that there's going to be some shortage of bacon is wrong," Steve Meyer, the vice president of pork analysis for EMI Analytics, told The New York Times. "There's plenty of hogs coming. There's going to be plenty of bacon."

Meyer did note, however, that the price of pork belly had gone up 50 cents a pound in the last two months.

The creation of baconshortage.com (which has since been completely erased) by the Ohio Pork Council has been ousted as a mere marketing ploy to get people talking about pork. In essence, this is how fake news gets around.

Check out our article on sniffing out sensationalized claims from real scientific studies.