Dive Summary:
- Seventeen farm and food safety groups—including the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Food & Water Watch and the Nebraska Farmers Union—have joined forces against the acquisition of Smithfield Foods by China's Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd.
- The groups sent a letter to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States asking that it block the sale of the pork processor, saying that the deal could weaken the U.S. food supply, damage rural communities economically and undermine national security.
- China buys more than 500,000 metric tons of pork from the U.S. each year, making it the country's third-largest pork export customer, and Smithfield executives insist that the deal would increase these exports and not result in the domestic sale of Asian pork.
From the article:
... In late May the company announced that Shuanghui would purchase Virginia-based Smithfield for $4.7 billion. Smithfield CEO Larry Pope testified before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee in early July in a bid to assuage similar concerns among federal lawmakers.
Committee chairwoman Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., called for more government oversight from additional agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ...
