NEW YORK -- Midwest floodwaters that swallowed crops are about to give consumers more grief at the grocery store.

In the latest bout of food inflation, beef, pork, poultry and even eggs, cheese and milk are expected to get more expensive as livestock owners go out of business or are forced to slaughter more cattle, hogs, turkeys and chickens to cope with rocketing costs for corn-based animal feed.

The floods engulfed an estimated 2 million or more acres of corn and soybean fields in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and other key growing states, sending world grain prices skyward on fears of a substantially smaller corn crop. Experts say the trickle-down effect could be more dramatic later this year, affecting everything from Thanksgiving turkeys to Christmas hams.

"We're in survival mode now," said Paul Hill, chairman of West Liberty Foods, a turkey processor based in West Liberty, Iowa. He estimated U.S. turkey producers will reduce their flocks by 10 percent to 15 percent nationwide, a cutback that will send consumer prices dramatically higher.

"The cost of Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys will go up this year, and maybe even more next year," said Hill.

Rod Brenneman, president and chief executive of Seaboard Foods, a pork supplier in Shawnee Mission, Kan. that produces 4 million hogs a year, said high corn costs were already forcing producers in his industry to cut back on the number of animals they raise.

"There's definitely liquidation of livestock happening," and that will cause meat prices to rise later this year and into 2009, said Brenneman, who is also the vice chairman of the American Meat Institute.

Brenneman's cost for feeding a single hog has gone up $30 in the past year because of record prices for corn and soybeans, the main ingredients in animal feed. Passing that increase on to consumers would tack an extra 15 cents per pound onto a pork chop.

It's a similar story for U.S. beef producers.

Corn prices were already rising before the floods, driven up 80 percent over the past year as developing countries such as China and India scramble for grains to feed people and livestock. U.S. production of ethanol, an alternative fuel that can be made with corn, has also pushed prices higher, prompting livestock owners to lobby Washington to roll back ethanol mandates.

In Iowa, the No. 1 U.S. corn grower, floods inundated about 9 percent of corn crops, representing about 1.2 million acres -- almost 1.5 percent of the country's anticipated harvest.

In Indiana, another 9 percent of corn and soybean crops were flooded, potentially costing farmers up to $840 million in lost earnings, Indiana Agriculture Director Andy Miller said.

Higher feed prices will eventually filter through to the cost of milk, cheese and yogurt, too, since 65 to 75 percent of a dairy farmers' production costs are for feed, said Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.