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Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Type	Public (NYSE: SFD)
Founded	1936
Headquarters	Smithfield, Virginia, USAUnited States, France, Poland, Romania, United Kingdom; joint ventures in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, China
Key people	Joseph W. Luter, III (Chairman), C. Larry Pope (CEO)
Industry	Food
Products	Meat
Revenue	$11 Billion USD
Employees	51,000
Website	[1]

Smithfield Foods, Inc. is a multinational corporation significant for being the world’s largest pork processor, hog producer and turkey processor. It processes 27 million hogs and raises 14 million annually. In 2006 it produced a total of 5.9 billion pounds of pork and 1.4 billion pounds of fresh beef.^[1] Smithfield brands include Smithfield, Butterball, John Morrell, Farmland Foods, Gwaltney, Patrick Cudahy, Krakus, Cook's Ham, and Stefano’s. Smithfield has operations in 26 states and 9 countries, with headquarters at Smithfield, Virginia, in Isle of Wight County, Virginia.

Smithfield started as what is now the Smithfield Packing Company, its largest subsidiary, and has grown through the acquisitions of, among others, Farmland Foods and Eckrich. In 2007, Smithfield completed an acquisition of Missouri and North Carolina-based Premium Standard Farms.^[2]

Contents 1 Environmental Record 2 Labor Dispute 3 Sow Crates 4 Charitable Giving 5 See also 6 External links 7 References

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Smithfield has come under criticism for the millions of gallons of fecal matter that it produces and stores in holding ponds, untreated. In a four year period, in North Carolina aline, 4.7 million gallons of hog fecal matter were released into the state's rivers. Workers and residents near Smithfield plants have reported health problems, and have complained about constant, overpowering stenches of hog feces.^[3] In 1997, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million for violation of the federal Clean Water Act.^[4] "The fine was the third-largest civil penalty ever levied under the act by the EPA. It amounted to .035 percent of Smithfield's annual sales."

The hog industry in North Carolina came under scrutiny in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd flooded much of the eastern part of the state, including a number of fecal matter holding ponds (lagoons, in industry parlance). Many of the hog farms that contracted with Smithfield were accused of polluting the state's rivers.^[5]

In the wake of Hurricane Floyd, Smithfield entered a settlement in 2000 with North Carolina Attorney General Mike Easley to fund development of environmentally sound waste management technologies for use on North Carolina swine farms. As part of this settlement, Smithfield committed $15 million to fund research at North Carolina State University.^[6] In addition, the company agreed to make an annual contribution of $2 million to fund environmental enhancement grants in the state.

The environmental effects of Smithfield's slaughterhouses have come under much less criticism than its industrial farming and the fecal matter that is a byproduct of the high concentration of pigs without adaquate sewage treatment facilities. Consequently many of its slaughterhouses have been environmentally certified by the International Standards Organization, .^[7]

In 2006, Smithfield's hog-production subsidiary Murphy-Brown agreed to adopt new measures to enhance environmental protections at its hog production facilities in North Carolina in a landmark environmental pact with the Waterkeeper Alliance, once one of Smithfield's biggest critics.^[8][9]

The Smithfield Packing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, has been the site of an ongoing dispute between the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which has been trying to organize the plant for over a decade. Employees at the plant voted against the union in 1994 and 1997, but the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) later alleged that unfair election conduct had occurred and ordered a new election.

In 2006, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the NLRB, and Smithfield agreed to comply with the NLRB's remedies to ensure a fair election.^[10] Smithfield and the employees at Tar Heel have repeatedly called on the UFCW to hold a new election and the company has agreed to pay half the cost of an independent observer to ensure a fair election process, but the union has refused the offer arguing that Smithfield will not allow a fair election and should recognize card-check organizing.^[11] After a year-long series of public demonstrations, several lockouts, a number of protests and a shareholder meeting which was disrupted by shareholders supporting the union, the UFCW called for a boycott of Smithfield products. In October 2007, Smithfield countered by filing a federal RICO Act lawsuit against UFCW.^[12]

Smithfield confines pregnant sows to 7 ft by 2 ft (2.1m by 0.6m) gestation stalls, where they spend most of their lives. As the sows grow larger, they are unable to turn around, and must choose between standing or sleeping on their chests. Illegal in several U.S. states and Sweden, gestation stalls are to be phased out in the E.U. by 2013. After several supermarket chains and McDonalds expressed concern about the crates, Smithfield announced that in ten years it would no longer use sow crates.^[13]

The Humane Society of the United States called the announcement "perhaps the most monumental advance for animal welfare in history of modern American agribusiness."^[14]

Established in 2002, the Smithfield-Luter Foundation is a non-profit organization that acts as the philanthropic wing of Smithfield Foods. The Foundation is dedicated primarily to providing scholarship opportunities to the children and grandchildren of Smithfield employees. Since its inception, the Foundation has granted 74 scholarships worth over $800,000.

The Foundation has also given $5 million to Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia and $5 million to the University of Virginia Cancer Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. It also provides ongoing support for it's Learners to Leaders programs, begun in 2006, and operating by the following year in four locations: Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Denison, Iowa, and Norfolk, Virginia. ^[15]

Intensive pig farming

• Smithfield Foods official corporate site
• The Smithfield-Luter Foundation charitable giving foundation
• Smithfield Justice - anti-Smithfield website operated by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
• SmithfieldFacts - Smithfield Foods' anti-union website about the UFCW's effort to unionize the Tar Heel, NC facility.