Pork production in the United States is a vital part of the economy. In 2007, there were nearly 35,000 direct, full-time equivalent pork producing jobs, which helped generate an additional 515,200 indirect jobs. The industry produced nearly $21.8 billion in personal income from total sales of more than $97 billion and added $34.5 billion to the country’s gross national product.

Today there are more than 67,000 pork operations compared with nearly 3 million in the 1950s. Farms have grown in size; 53 percent of them now produce 5,000 or more pigs per year. Nearly 21 billion pounds of pork were processed from about 105 million hogs in 2007. A total of 1,305,622 metric tons of pork valued at more than $3.1 billion was exported in 2007. (Click here to see the top 10 destinations for U.S. pork .)