The National Pork Producers Council and the Nebraska Pork Producers appealed to federal agriculture officials Monday for $250 million to help their industry through a continuing financial crisis.

Industry advocates blame high feed costs and the media's regular references to the H1N1 flu virus as "swine flu" - wrongly implying that eating pork is a flu risk - as leading contributors to projected 2009 losses of $1.26 billion.

If the government comes through, it won't be because the people asking are in a position to emphasize the plight of the little guy.

Nebraska swine farms with 5,000 or more animals accounted for 82.8 percent of all hogs and pigs sold, and 76.5 percent of sales revenue in the 2007 ag census.

The concentration and consolidation of pork production leave Terry Schrick of rural Waco wondering how much aggressive purchasing for the school lunch and other federal food programs would matter to the people he cares about most.

"How much would this ever filter down to the small person?" asked Schrick, the Nebraska Pork Producers' executive secretary from 1968 until 1998.

In 1997, his last year in office, the census counted 6,587 pork farms in the state. At that point, the biggest farms already accounted for 49.8 percent of animals sold and 45.5 percent of pork revenue.

Since then, the number of pork farms in the state has dropped to less than 2,500 and the market share of the biggest producers has almost doubled.

"They call it the National Pork Producers Council," Schrick said. "And they could call it the National Pork Producers Corporate Council."

Among the victims of the ailing industry are the nation's 20 largest pork producers, including Progressive Swine Technologies and Nebraska Pork Partners, both of Columbus.

Between them, those two operations had more than 100,000 females of breeding age on site last year.

Ryan Mead, spokesman for Progressive Swine Technologies, said the industry isn't asking for direct government payments.

"You will not see us turn into the auto industry," Mead said.

What producers want to see from the government is simple enough.

"We need their assurance that they care about pork producers nationally," he said, "and that they understand that H1N1 impacted the industry immensely."

Nine governors, including Nebraska's Dave Heineman, made a similar appeal earlier this month. So far, the response from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has not been encouraging.

Larry Sitzman, top executive of Nebraska Pork Producers, said it was fair to ask how much the public cared about a livestock sector in which bigger operations had become so dominant.

His answer, in part: "American consumers need to make a decision if they want to purchase animal product protein from all sizes of American producers or purchase foreign product imported into this country.

"They may soon face dependence on foreign food much like our dependence on foreign fuel."

His reference to the fuel dilemma does not mean that spokesmen for the pork industry are enthusiastically endorsing efforts to persuade federal officials to mandate an upgrade in standard ethanol blends from 10 percent to 15 percent.

In fact, in a conference call with the news media earlier Monday, spokesmen for the National Pork Producers Council said they are eager to see an analysis of such a move on corn prices.

Council President Don Butler said "we simply want to understand what the impacts would be to all parties who have an interest in that."

Booming ethanol demand helped push corn prices past $7 a bushel at Nebraska grain elevators last year.

Neil Dierks, the council's top executive, said the help being asked "is not a bailout at all." He called it "a wise use of taxpayer money."

At Progressive Swine Technologies, Mead said the state's largest hog operation has endured so far without cutting employees, without contracting out any of its production and with virtually all its hogs fed to market weight in Nebraska.

How much, nonetheless, is business hurting?

"Enough for us to review everything we do every single day," he said.

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.