On Monday, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) asked the USDA for $250 million in assistance to "help pork producers through the catastrophic market situation they are currently experiencing." It is indeed a catastrophe: In the Great Pork Glut of 2009, so many piggies went to market that producers are losing money on each hog they sell, with losses projected to grow this fall. The NPPC wants USDA to buy $150 million worth of the surplus pork for use in the federal nutrition programs and to dole out an additional $100 million for swine flu surveillance and vaccine development — even as the industry continues to insist that it was not the cause of you'd-better-call-it-"novel-H1N1."