Why have I been hearing this ? are they out of feed or room or what, cant the animals keep growing till the plants get back up and running ? not sure I can see destroying livestock when its needed in so many places .
As others have said its mostly timing. If the pigs get too big the packers won't take them and the next group of pigs are still coming. The local lockers are all booked for at least a month or longer. With daily temps ranging between mid 50s to 80 degrees that doesn't give much time for processing an entire hog safely. And the number of hogs...most producers in our area have between 1,000 to several thousand hogs...that's alot of pork. Euthanizing isn't something that's taken lightly by farmers, it's their job to raise and care for their animals, not to have to euthanize them.
With all that being said, I did get a chuckle from my dr a couple days ago. He used to be a farmer, he was proud as a peacock that him and a couple other drs went together and butchered their first hog.
Ryan