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2020-04-13 Economy
World's largest pork processor shuts down plant, warns of meat shortages during pandemic
[NYPost] Smithfield Foods, the world's biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was moving "perilously close to the edge" in supplies for grocers.

Slaughterhouse shutdowns are disrupting the U.S. food supply chain, crimping availability of meat at retail stores and leaving farmers without outlets for their livestock.

Smithfield extended the closure of its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, plant after initially saying it would idle temporarily for cleaning. The facility is one of the nation's largest pork processing facilities, representing 4% to 5% of U.S. pork production, according to the company.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Saturday that 238 Smithfield employees had active cases of the new coronavirus, accounting for 55% of the state’s total. Noem and the mayor of Sioux Falls had recommended the company shut the plant, which has about 3,700 workers, for at least two weeks.
Posted by Neville and Tenille3829 2020-04-13 01:39|| || Front Page|| [11139 views ]  Top

#1 Gaia, the second wave. Those biscuits and sausage gravy are fattening and can lead to heart disease and obesity.
Posted by Besoeker 2020-04-13 03:04||   2020-04-13 03:04|| Front Page Top

#2 Trump should invoke Defense Production Act!
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-13 03:08||   2020-04-13 03:08|| Front Page Top

#3 Smithfield products are processed in China and packaged there and sent back the USA. No label of packaged in China.
Posted by Dale 2020-04-13 03:12||   2020-04-13 03:12|| Front Page Top

#4 Auto ship orders out of control. Excess inventory auto shipped and required to receive. 1000 eggs warehouse overstock sent to franchises who are required to receive. Reduced hours. Poor business performance. Whatcha gonna do when they come for you, poor boys, poor boys.
Posted by Dale 2020-04-13 03:20||   2020-04-13 03:20|| Front Page Top

#5 Are you trying for our Delphian Oracle, Dale?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-13 03:28||   2020-04-13 03:28|| Front Page Top

#6 Aaaah... tell me about it. I'd kill for a ham sandwich these days.
Posted by Dron66046 2020-04-13 06:04||   2020-04-13 06:04|| Front Page Top

#7 And here I am with an almost empty bag of frozen Smithfield maple sausage patties wondering why the fates conspire....
Posted by Mercutio 2020-04-13 08:13||   2020-04-13 08:13|| Front Page Top

#8 Re #3: not sure that jives with why 3,700 employees were needed in the SD plant. That said, Food Faire carries smithfield and they ARE China-addicted.
Posted by Helmuth, Speaking for Clonter6914 2020-04-13 08:21||   2020-04-13 08:21|| Front Page Top

#9 No idiot ships pork to China for slaughter and butcher then ships it back to the US for packaging. The company may be Chinese owned, but they're slaughtering and butchering in the US, of US-raised hogs.

Doesn't anyone remember that China's pig farms were going through a swine flu outbreak mid to late 2019?


And Dale needs to lay off the bath salts. Nothing he said makes sense.
Posted by Rob Crawford 2020-04-13 08:36||   2020-04-13 08:36|| Front Page Top

#10 I don't make this stuff up. Just pass on what I find in my many travels. Many many sources in all sorts of industry. Negative comments expected. Rantburg is my sounding board to maintain my balance. Today did find a local farm source for cured bacon. More interested in supporting local farms these days.
Posted by Dale 2020-04-13 11:36||   2020-04-13 11:36|| Front Page Top

#11 Muslims and Jews least effected.
Posted by AlmostAnonymous5839 2020-04-13 11:52||   2020-04-13 11:52|| Front Page Top

#12 #11 I'm not affected because there are two "Russian" stores in my immediate neighborhood, and they carry pork products from Eastern Europe.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-13 12:03||   2020-04-13 12:03|| Front Page Top

#13 ЛАДНО!
Posted by Clem 2020-04-13 12:10||   2020-04-13 12:10|| Front Page Top

#14 Shipping costs don't add up Dale.
Posted by Woodrow 2020-04-13 17:55||   2020-04-13 17:55|| Front Page Top

#15 Smithfield said it will resume operations in Sioux Falls after further direction from local, state and federal officials. The company will pay employees for the next two weeks, according to the statement.

“It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running,” Smithfield chief executive Ken Sullivan said in a statement Sunday. “These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers.”

The company has been running its plants to supply US consumers during the outbreak, Sullivan said.

“We have a stark choice as a nation: We are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19,” he said.

Other major US meat and poultry processors, including Tyson Foods Inc., Cargill Inc. and JBS USA, have already idled plants in other states.

This is pretty serious stuff. The plant had 6% of the workers with active COVID, which is about half the cases in SD. That plant is about 10% of Smithfield's US operations and 5% of the US pork production.

It sounds like the CEO wants to keep going, but the state and local governments recommended a closure and now he's looking for help and direction from the government.

If we want to keep continuity in our food pipeline, the FDA/CDC/USDA need to step in quickly in these cases (not just this particular one) and set up procedures to get people back to work asap. Yes, invoke the Defense Production Act if necessary, and put teams in place at each plant to monitor and assist. It seems these plants are shutting down with little fanfare.
Posted by KBK 2020-04-13 18:21||   2020-04-13 18:21|| Front Page Top

#16 Smithfield is wholly owned by the Chinese WH Group, the largest pork producer in the world and the largest meat producer in China.
Posted by KBK 2020-04-13 18:37||   2020-04-13 18:37|| Front Page Top

#17 WH Group Acquisition was "the largest ever takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese company, roughly doubling the number of US jobs tied to direct investment by China." This happened during the Obama administration. The WH Group wikipedia entry is worth reading.


Posted by KBK 2020-04-13 18:39||   2020-04-13 18:39|| Front Page Top

#18 And, "the deal included Smithfield's 146,000 acres of land, which made WH Group one of the largest overseas owners of American farmland."
Posted by KBK 2020-04-13 18:39||   2020-04-13 18:39|| Front Page Top

#19 More: "In addition to owning over 500 farms in the US, Smithfield contracts with another 2,000 independent farms around the country to grow Smithfield's pigs. Outside the US, the company has facilities in Mexico, Poland, Romania, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Globally the company employed 50,200 in 2016 and reported an annual revenue of $14 billion. Its 973,000-square-foot meat-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was said in 2000 to be the world's largest, processing 32,000 pigs a day."
Posted by KBK 2020-04-13 18:41||   2020-04-13 18:41|| Front Page Top

#20 Even more: "In 1992 Smithfield opened the world's largest processing plant, a 973,000-square-foot facility in Tar Heel, North Carolina, which by 2000 could process 32,000 pigs a day. Smithfield purchased John Morrell & Co in Sioux Falls, SD, in 1995 and Circle Four Farms in 1998. In 1999 it bought two of the largest pig producers in the United States: Carroll's Foods for around $500 million and Murphy Family Farms of North Carolina for $460 million. The latter was at that point the country's largest producer. Farmland Foods of Kansas City was added in 2003, as were Sara Lee's European Meats, ConAgra Foods Refrigerated Meats, Butterball (the poultry producer) and, in 2007, Premium Standard Farms. Smithfield sold its 49 percent share in Butterball in 2008 for an estimated $175 million. In 2009 Smithfield was assessed a $900,000 penalty by the U.S. Justice Department to settle charges that the company had engaged in illegal merger activity during its takeover of Premium Standard Farms.

The acquisitions caused concern among regulators in the United States regarding the company's control of the food supply. After Smithfield's purchase of Murphy Family Farms in 1999, the Agriculture Department described it as "absurdly big". According to agricultural researchers Jill Hobbs and Linda Young, writing in 2001, the acquisitions constituted a "major structural change" in the hog industry in the United States, leaving Smithfield in control of 10–15 percent of the country's hog production. As of 2006 four companies—Smithfield, Tyson Foods, Swift & Company, and Cargill—were responsible for the production of 70 percent of pork in the United States."

And yet the Obama administration allowed China to buy all that.
Posted by KBK 2020-04-13 18:42||   2020-04-13 18:42|| Front Page Top

14:34 Frank G
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