Philip Danforth Armour Sr. was an American meatpacking industrialist who founded the Chicago-based firm of Armour & Company. Born on a farm in upstate New York, he initially gained financial success when he made $8,000 during the California gold rush from 1852 to 1856. He later opened a wholesale soap business in Cincinnati, then moved it to Milwaukee.
Conagra Brands, Inc. is an American consumer packaged goods holding company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Conagra makes and sells products under various brand names that are available in supermarkets, restaurants, and food service establishments. Based on its 2021 revenue, the company ranked 331st on the 2022 Fortune 500.
The meat-packing industry handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of meat from animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock. Poultry is generally not included. This greater part of the entire meat industry is primarily focused on producing meat for human consumption, but it also yields a variety of by-products including hides, dried blood, protein meals such as meat & bone meal, and, through the process of rendering, fats.
Slim Jim is an American meat snack brand sold globally and manufactured by Conagra Brands. They are widely available and popular in the United States, with 2015 revenues of $575 million. About 569 million Slim Jims snacks are produced annually in at least 21 varieties.
Jonathan Ogden Armour was an American meatpacking magnate and only surviving son of Civil War–era industrialist Philip Danforth Armour. He became owner and president of Armour & Company upon the death of his father in 1901. During his tenure as president, Armour and Co. expanded nationwide and overseas, growing from a mid-sized regional meatpacker to the largest food products company in the United States.
Swanson is a brand of TV dinners, broths, and canned poultry made for the North American and Hong Kong markets. The former Swanson Company was founded in Omaha, Nebraska, where it developed improvements of the frozen dinner. The TV dinner business is currently owned by Conagra Brands, while the broth business is currently owned by the Campbell Soup Company. TV dinner products currently sold under the brand include Swanson's Classics TV dinners and pot pies, and the current broth lineup includes chicken broth and beef broth.
Hunt's is the name of a brand of preserved tomato products owned by Conagra Brands. The company was founded in 1888, in Sebastopol, California, as the Hunt Bros. Fruit Packing Co., by Joseph and William Hunt. The brothers relocated to nearby Santa Rosa in 1890, and then to Hayward in 1895. This small canning operation grew rapidly, focused on canning the products of California's booming fruit and vegetable industries. By 1941, the plant shipped a hundred million cans of soup, fruits, vegetables, and juices annually.
Eckrich is a prepared meat brand owned by Smithfield Foods, a subsidiary of China's WH Group. Eckrich sells smoked sausages, cold cuts, hot dogs, corn dogs, Vienna sausages, breakfast sausages and bacon under the Eckrich brand name.
Henkel Corporation, doing business as Henkel North American Consumer Goods and formerly The Dial Corporation, is an American company based in Stamford, Connecticut. It is a manufacturer of personal care and household cleaning products and is a subsidiary of multinational company Henkel AG & Co. KGaA.
JBS USA Holdings, Inc. is a meat processing company and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian multinational JBS S.A. The subsidiary was created when JBS entered the U.S. market in 2007 with its purchase of Swift & Company.
Pinnacle Foods, Inc., is a packaged foods company headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, that specializes in shelf-stable and frozen foods. The company became a subsidiary of Conagra Brands on October 26, 2018.
Dial is an American brand of soap, body wash and hand sanitizer manufactured by Henkel North American Consumer Goods, the American subsidiary of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA. It was the world's first antibacterial soap.
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a pork producer and food-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia. It operates as an independent subsidiary of the Chinese-owned conglomerate WH Group. Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter and his son, the company is the largest pig and pork producer in the world. In addition to owning over 500 farms in the US, Smithfield contracts with another 2,000 independent farms around the country to raise Smithfield's pigs. Outside the US, the company has facilities in Mexico, Poland, Romania, Germany, Slovakia 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, slaughtering 32,000 pigs a day.
Purex is a brand of laundry detergent and laundry-related products manufactured by Henkel North American Consumer Goods and marketed in the United States and Canada. Purex is one of the most widely used laundry detergents in North America. Its original product, Purex Bleach, was a major competitor to Clorox bleach. The brand name is also used for a line of in-wash "fragrance booster" products called Purex Crystals. The Purex Crystals brand was originally launched as an in-wash fabric softener product.
Cudahy Packing Company was an American meat packing company established in 1887 as the Armour-Cudahy Packing Company and incorporated in Maine in 1915. The Cudahy meatpacking business was acquired by Bar-S Foods Company in 1981.
International Home Foods (IHF) was an American manufacturer, distributor and marketer of food products, based in Parsippany, New Jersey. It was acquired in 2000 by ConAgra Foods and merged into ConAgra's Grocery Products division. IHF's best known brands were Chef Boyardee pasta products, Bumble Bee Seafood, PAM cooking spray, and Gulden's mustard.
Libby's was an American company that produced canned food and beverages. The firm was established in 1869 in Chicago, Illinois. The Libby's trademark is currently owned by Libby's Brand Holding based in Geneva, Switzerland, and is licensed to several companies around the world.
John Plankinton was an American businessman. He is noted for expansive real estate developments in Milwaukee, including the luxurious Plankinton House Hotel designed as an upscale residence for the wealthy. He was involved with railroading and banking. The Plankinton Bank he developed became the leading bank of Milwaukee in his lifetime. He was involved in the development of the Milwaukee City Railroad Company, an electric railway.
The meat industry has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Outbreaks of the virus took place in factories operated by the meat packing industry and the poultry processing industry. These outbreaks affected dozens of plants, leading to closures of some factories and disruption of others, and posed a significant threat to the meat supply in the United States. The damage the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the meatpacking industry was unexpected and resulted in a sharp reduction of meat processing and capacity reduction of meatpacking companies.
