Lower feed costs and higher pork prices are encouraging clear expansion in the pork industry this year, said Steve Meyer, president of Paragon Economics. And the large meat supplies are actually good news for hog farmers who are seeing demand for their product stay strong as supplies rise, he said at the Iowa Pork Congress in Des Moines last week.

"We’ve seen a big change in U.S. consumers as far as attitudes toward meat and especially toward animal fats," Meyer said. "That’s a huge factor in demand that we’ve seen grow robustly over the last few years," he said.

Consumer confidence and unemployment indexes show consumers’...