That is their conclusion after including Friday’s export/import data in their calculations of US domestic per-capita availability/disappearance/consumption for October.

Those numbers for each species, of course, are key items in determining the status of demand for each species and the news was good once again.

Real per capita expenditures (RPCE) for the four major species dipped slightly from October but remained above $49 in year-2000 dollars last month.

As can be seen below, that number is 6.8 per cent higher than one year ago and pushes the year to date total to more than four per cent higher than in 2013 at this point.

The "steady Eddy" species for demand this year has been pork and that continued in October when RPCE was 9.6 per cent higher than one year ago.

It brings the YTD figure to +7.4 per cent.

Further, October’s pork RPCE of $13.02 year-2000 dollars marks the first time since 1991 that this measure has exceeded $13 – and November is usually the high water mark for the year!

Some pressure on wholesale trimmings and ham prices since 1 November has some participants questioning whether demand has remained strong but we think the magnitude of the cut price declines is pretty normal for this time of year as hog numbers increase seasonally.

Will November’s RPCE growth slow? Probably – but simply because a +10 per cent pace strikes the authors as very difficult to maintain.