Pork cutout value

The pork cutout is the wholesale value of a hog carcass: USDA prices the primal cuts that packers sell (loin, butt, picnic, rib, ham and belly) from their reported boxed-pork sales and adds them up to a value per hundredweight of carcass. It is what packers earn for the meat, while the lean hog index is what they pay for the hogs, so the two together frame packer margins and the cash hog bid.

Cutout and the lean hog value

The carcass cutout was $69.55/cwt on 13 Nov 2026; over the past 52 weeks it ranged from $68.99 to $104.82. On 13 Nov 2026 the cutout minus the lean hog value was +11.82 $/cwt. A wide spread means packers earn well on each carcass and can bid up for hogs; a narrow or negative spread squeezes them and usually caps cash hog prices.

Pork bellies

The belly primal, the cut that becomes bacon, was $68.75/cwt on 13 Nov 2026, within a 52-week range of $61.25 to $165.87. Bellies are the most volatile primal: retail bacon features and food-service demand lift them into summer, and they account for much of the cutout’s seasonal swing.

Annual averages since 2016

Sources

Cutout and primal values: USDA AMS National Daily Pork Report, LM_PK602, FOB plant, afternoon (US public domain). Lean hog value: Wheats calculation from USDA LM_HG201 with the CME index method. Wheats provides information aggregation, not trading recommendations. See also CME lean hog futures and China hog prices and global pork demand.