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Company type | Subsidiary of Smithfield Foods |
---|---|
Founded | 1988 |
Headquarters | Princeton, Missouri |
Smithfield Hog Production Division, formerly Premium Standard Farms, Inc. (PSF), is a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Premium Standard Farms was the second-largest pork producer and the sixth-largest processor in the United States until Smithfield Foods acquired it in 2007. [1] [2] [3]
In 2013, the company was acquired by Shuanghui International, China’s largest pork producer. [4]
PSF was founded in 1988 in Smithfield, Virginia, [5] with the aim of creating a standardized method to produce premium pork. To accomplish this goal, the company decided to pursue full vertical integration—a first for pork producers in the United States.[ citation needed ]
In 2007, Smithfield acquired Premium Standard Farms for $800 million in cash, stock, and debt. [6] [5]
Smithfield Hog Production is headquartered in Princeton, Missouri[ citation needed ] and owns a pork processing plant located in Milan, Missouri. [7] At one time, the company operated 132 company-owned farms and 109 contract farms in the state of Missouri, in addition to a leased farm and eight feed mills. [8]
In July 2021, the company closed its original slaughter plant in Smithfield, Virginia. [8] [9]
In February 2023, Smithfield Foods closed its meatpacking plant in Vernon, California. [10] [11] [12]
In May 2023, the company closed 37 sow farms in Missouri. [8] [13] [14]
In October 2023 the company shut down a pork plant in Charlotte, North Carolina. [15]
In December 2023 Smithfield ended contracts with 26 hog farms in Utah citing oversupply. [15]
Valley View Farm, near Green Castle, Missouri, is a finishing site that houses more than 100,000 hogs at any given time. Half of the site's waste lagoons are covered to allow the harvesting of methane gas. [16] Smithfield also has farms that engage in methane harvesting in Bethany and Princeton. [17]
Smithfield built a connection from its farms in northern Missouri to the pipeline that supplies natural gas to Milan, Missouri. Fuel produced by Smithfield is mixed directly into Milan's gas supply. [18] This project took 18 months.
Smithfield has formed a partnership with Roeslein Alternative Energy and Monarch Bioenergy, to help produce biogas. [18] [17] In early 2020, Smithfield and Roesleing Alternative Energy announced an additional $45 million investment in Monarch. This money will be used to expand Monarch's renewable natural gas capture and distribution to at least 85% of Smithfield's Missouri farms. [19]
Smithfield's gas harvesting efforts are part of its stated goal of reducing its greenhouse gas footprint by 25%. This is using the company's 2010 emissions as the base for calculation. [18] [17]
In 2010, a Jackson County, Missouri, jury awarded seven neighboring farmers $11 million in damages for odors emanating from a 4,300 acre finishing farm near Berlin in Gentry County, Missouri where an estimated 200,000 hogs are processed annually. In 2006, six plaintiffs were awarded $4.6 million from the lawsuit (the largest in a hog farm odor issue), originally filed in 1999. [1] [2]
Intensive pig farming, also known as pig factory farming, is the primary method of pig production, in which grower pigs are housed indoors in group-housing or straw-lined sheds, whilst pregnant sows are housed in gestation crates or pens and give birth in farrowing crates.
Tyson Foods, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Springdale, Arkansas that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork after JBS S.A. It annually exports the largest percentage of beef out of the United States. Together with its subsidiaries, it operates major food brands, including Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright Brand, Aidells, and State Fair. Tyson Foods ranked No. 79 in the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
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.
The pig, often called swine, hog, or domesticpig when distinguishing from other members of the genus Sus, is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is variously considered a subspecies of Sus scrofa or a distinct species. The pig's head-plus-body length ranges from 0.9 to 1.8 m, and adult pigs typically weigh between 50 and 350 kg, with well-fed individuals even exceeding this range. The size and weight of hogs largely depends on their breed. Compared to other artiodactyls, a pig's head is relatively long and pointed. Most even-toed ungulates are herbivorous, but pigs are omnivores, like their wild relative. Pigs grunt and make snorting sounds.
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Ribs of pork, beef, lamb, and venison are a cut of meat. The term ribs usually refers to the less meaty part of the chops, often cooked as a slab. Ribs of bison, goat, ostrich, crocodile, alligator, llama, alpaca, beefalo, African buffalo, water buffalo, kangaroo, deer, and other animals are also consumed in various parts of the world.
ContiGroup Companies, Inc (CGC) was founded by Simon Fribourg in Arlon, Belgium, in 1813 as a grain-trading firm. Formerly known as Continental Grain, ContiGroup has expanded into a multinational corporation with offices and facilities in 10 countries while employing more than 13,500 people worldwide. Today, CGC is one of the largest privately held corporations in the United States.
Farmland Industries was the largest agricultural cooperative in North America when it eventually sold all of its assets in 2002–04. During its 74-year history, Farmland served its farmer membership as a diversified, integrated organization, playing a significant role in agricultural markets both domestically and worldwide.
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.
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Intensive animal farming, industrial livestock production, and macro-farms, also known as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture, specifically an approach to animal husbandry designed to maximize production while minimizing costs. To achieve this, agribusinesses keep livestock such as cattle, poultry, and fish at high stocking densities, at large scale, and using modern machinery, biotechnology, and global trade. The main products of this industry are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption. There are issues regarding whether intensive animal farming is sustainable in the social long-run given its costs in resources. Analysts also raise issues about its ethics.
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