At Smithfield Foods' slaughterhouse, China brings home U.S. bacon


Olde Hornet

Well-Known Member

SMITHFIELD, Virginia (Reuters) - Smithfield Foods' slaughterhouse in Virginia used to carve up pork for American sandwiches and holiday dinners. But workers now box up pig carcasses to ship to China, according to employees, local officials and industry sources.

The transformation at the Smithfield, Virginia, plant shows how the global meat industry is adapting to profit from African swine fever, a fatal pig disease that has killed millions of hogs in China and turned the world's top pork consumer into a major meat importer.

Bought by China's WH Group Ltd <0288.HK> six years ago for $4.7 billion, Smithfield Foods has retooled U.S. processing operations to direct meat to China, which produced half the world's pork before swine fever decimated the industry.

The world's biggest pork processor operates a white, box-shaped meat plant in Smithfield, Virginia, home to 8,000 as well as the company's headquarters and a wider tourist economy built on its famous hams, bacon and sausages.

Since late spring, pigs trucked to the plant have been slaughtered and sliced into thirds for shipment to China, where Chinese workers process the carcasses further, company employees and industry sources told Reuters.

"They got an order to fill: China," said one plant worker, who asked to remain anonymous.
 
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