Supply chain maps | Pork
Pork supply chain
Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) maps the first links of the U.S. pork supply chain: where the hogs are, which permit covers them, who owns the packers, and the public enforcement record where one exists. The three maps below share one sourced dataset, last updated October 7, 2026. Every figure carries its source and as-of date; a figure FAT has not yet sourced is labeled as such rather than shown as fact.
Hover or tap any state on a map for its figures. Each map has an “About this map” panel.
One caution applies to all three maps: permit counts are not comparable across states. A large hog operation is a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO). A federal Clean Water Act permit under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) creates a record in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database; a state-only permit does not. Iowa, North Carolina, Indiana and Nebraska regulate most large hog operations under state-only permits that produce no NPDES record and therefore no ECHO entry, while Illinois and Oklahoma route most of them through NPDES permits. A low ECHO count is a gap in federal records, not evidence of compliance. Where a state publishes the permit instrument per operation, the gap is counted rather than estimated: 99.6% of Iowa’s 8,816 swine facilities and 88.9% of Minnesota’s 5,555 swine operations hold no NPDES permit.
The three maps
Supply
Pork Supply Map
Hog inventory for the 14 states the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) publishes individually (73.66 million head nationally, June 1, 2026), labeled on the map and split into breeding and market hogs, with a second layer showing the kind of permit the state requires of large swine operations.
Open Pork Supply Map →Enforcement
Pork Enforcement Map
North Carolina’s permitted swine operations, 14 inspection staff, 568 complaints investigated and the verified violations among them, from North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) records, with the legal authority behind each figure and the six published counts of the state’s swine operations that do not reconcile.
Open Pork Enforcement Map →Integrated model
Pork Integrated Model Map
What the other two maps do not carry: how much of the national herd sits in states whose default permit creates no federal record, computed from inventory and permit regime; the North Carolina legal and statutory record on hog waste; who owns the packers (WH Group’s Smithfield, JBS N.V.) and how far Smithfield’s integration has loosened; the Align RNG (renewable natural gas) biogas projects; and which FAT label categories would be the only route for any of it to reach a package.
Open Pork Integrated Model Map →Data sources and methodology
- Hog inventory: USDA NASS, Quarterly Hogs and Pigs, June 25, 2026 (inventory as of June 1, 2026). NASS publishes 14 states individually; the remaining 36 are a single combined figure and are shown as “not separately published,” never as zero.
- Permit regime by state: each state’s own program rules, linked from the map (Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) construction permits and manure management plans; North Carolina DEQ animal waste general permits; Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) State Disposal System and NPDES feedlot permits; and the equivalents for the other published states). Where a state publishes the permit instrument per operation, FAT counts it: Iowa DNR’s Animal Feeding Operations geodatabase (April 2024, facilities at 300 or more animal units) and MPCA’s Feedlots in Minnesota extract (July 2026).
- North Carolina enforcement: DEQ Division of Water Resources Animal Feed Operation Permits feature service, the April 23, 2026 List of Permitted Animal Facilities, the fiscal 2023–24 Annual Report to the General Assembly on Animal Waste Management, and DEQ complaint records as reported by Inside Climate News and The Assembly (2026). FAT’s own deduplicated count of active swine operations (1,987) is shown alongside DEQ’s published figures.
- Legal authority: N.C. Supreme Court, DEQ v. N.C. Farm Bureau Federation, No. 338PA23 (2025); Session Law 2026-11 (repeal of the swine violation points system, General Statute 143-215.6E); General Statute 143-215.10I (lagoon and sprayfield performance standards); Session Law 2025-97 (general permit extension to 2028); the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act (2018); the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2019 exemption of animal-waste air emissions from Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) reporting and REACH v. EPA (D.D.C. 2025, on appeal); EPA External Civil Rights Compliance Office Complaint No. 05RNO-21-R4 (open).
- Ownership and integration: Smithfield Foods Form 10-K for fiscal 2025 (filed March 24, 2026) and fiscal 2025 results; JBS N.V. parent since June 2025. Packer concentration is the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Packers and Stockyards Division Annual Report 2021 & 2022, Tables 5–6 (four-firm concentration ratio, CR4, of 65% in 2021, the latest year published). Company-level slaughter shares are not published by USDA and are not shown.
- Biogas: Align RNG project disclosures (Smithfield / Dominion Energy joint venture) and the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard crediting for dairy and swine manure.
- Known gaps: integrator affiliation is absent from every DEQ source; no state lagoon mapping layer exists; NASS state detail stops at 14 states. These are stated on the maps rather than filled from secondary estimates.
How these maps are different
Most maps of hog production show either where hogs are raised or where a federal permit exists. These maps combine hog inventory with the permit architecture that decides what federal records can see, the state enforcement record where one exists, and the ownership behind the packers, in a format designed for shoppers as well as regulators and researchers.
Sourced
Regulatory data, not marketing claims
Every figure is drawn from USDA, state regulators, court records and company filings, and carries its source and as-of date on the map.
Counted
Counted, not estimated
Where a state publishes the permit instrument per operation, FAT counts how many hold no federal permit rather than inferring it. Ratios are computed from the published counts, never typed.
Integrated
Integrated, not siloed
Permit regime, enforcement, ownership and the legal record are placed within the pork supply chain, not separated from it.
Gaps shown
Honest about the gaps
States NASS does not publish are shown as such, never as zero. Counts that do not reconcile are listed side by side. A figure without a citation is labeled, not shown as fact.
Labels
Part of a larger system
These maps connect to FAT’s 16-category framework for reading meat labels: what a pork label discloses, and what it leaves out.
Why it matters
Pork labels do not disclose where hogs were raised, how waste was managed, or who controls the operation. A cut from a lagoon-and-sprayfield operation and one from a pasture-based farm carry identical mandatory label information.
The goal is not to tell consumers what to buy. It is to ensure they can see the full picture before they decide.
Related reading
These maps are reviewed each quarter. Corrections welcome: dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com.