Pork and bacon pig prices fell by as much as $10 a head during the fortnightly Forbes pig sale last Friday.
About 535 pigs were yarded for the first sale of the year including 46 backfatters, 95 baconers, 90 pork pigs and 304 suckers.
"The market was cheaper with the exception of backfatters which were firm," said sale host VC Reid Livestock agent Scott Reid, Forbes.
Sows sold from 80 cents a kilogram to 130c/kg (liveweight) while bacon slipped by $5 to $10 a head to sell from $100 to $262. Pork fell by $5 to sell from $120 to $196 and suckers also slipped by $5 to $10 to sell from $52 to $185.
Trangie pig producer Paul Cameron, Trangie Station, sold 43 pork pigs to a top of $196 a head.
Mr Cameron's family have farmed in Trangie since the 1880s and he brings a load of pigs to Forbes every two to four weeks. On Friday he said the state of the Australian pork industry was dire.
"Pork is really struggling at the moment," he said. "I've fed these pigs over Christmas hoping to flip them into the Chinese New Year and (with) the shortage of food over Christmas," he said.
"But it's been quite disheartening.
"We have gone through the same three years of drought as the sheep and cattle producers and we are still in a worse situation."
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Mr Cameron grows his pigs to butcher weight which is equivalent to the size of a trade weight lamb.
"I pay $1900 a tonne for my pellets. You cannot sell pork in Australia if it is not 100 per cent grain fed," he said.
"It has got to be quality. Anything that looks just a little bit off is sold at a third of the price or passed in."
For these reasons, Mr Cameron strongly encouraged consumers to only buy Australian pork.
"The government has done a fantastic job in keeping swine flu out and Australian pigs are the healthiest in the world," he said. "There are none with biosecurity as strong as Australian pork and we have traceability right through the tagging system.
"We should be the envy of the world."
Agent Scott Reid added that Breakout River Meats, Cowra, was the only plant that still processed pigs locally and that was taking a toll on the market at Forbes.
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