“That’s too much bacon…” Said NO ONE ever!

How China’s Pork Empire Is Undermining American Farms and Food Security

By Clark Caras

What happens when the largest processor of pork takes over the largest pork producer in the United States?

Well, as they say… nothing very good; especially when that processor of pork comes from the nation that consumes more pork than any other in the world – China. A nation that consumes half the world’s pork and sees the need for “the other white meat,” growing at an average of 12-percent a year.

That’s what happened in 2013 when a Chinese conglomerate – Hong Kong based WH Group (majority owner of China’s Henan Shuanghui Investment and Development) – purchased America’s Virginia based Smithfield Foods with its 60,000 employees in 23 states and four countries.

Big deal you might say… big deal indeed.

In fact, it was history’s largest buyout, at $7.1 billion, and takeover of an American company by a Chinese company.

In 2013 WH’s Chinese hog production totaled 300,000 hogs; while in that same year Smithfield’s US hog production topped out at 16.3 million animals.

A big deal approved in September 2013 by Washington’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), out of the swamp’s very own Treasury Department; thus giving a hostile foreign company ownership and control of a very large portion of the United States food supply.

A big deal that at the time of purchase saw Smithfield with a 26-percent share of US hog slaughter capacity and a 16-percent share of America’s sow herd. And a deal that now sees Smithfield, the largest pork producer in America, move to cut by 20-percent its hog production.

The dominoes with Smithfield seemed to begin when in 2021 the company announced the closure of its 10,000 head a day pork processing facility in its home state of Virginia. At the same time as this Smithfield began reducing farm operations in Missouri, Utah, Arizona, California and along the East Coast.

A big deal that a decade later sees the Chinese owned food processor canceling farm contracts in rural communities across America, laying off employees – causing two rural counties in Utah to declare a state of economic emergency; and using the advanced technology gained from buying Smithfield to begin competing – out of its Chinese farms – with non-Smithfield American pork processors and producers in selling to South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan; a nation that had always been America’s biggest importer of USA pork.

In July Smithfield Foods announced it would be closing a ham-boning facility in Altoona, Iowa and doing away with its 300 jobs. In 2023 the company announced the closure of its Charlotte, North Carolina pork processing plant, affecting 107 jobs. The year before in 2022 it was announced a pork site in Vernon, California; this following closure the year before of a plant in San Jose.

So for 10 years now more of the American pork supply has been leaving our shores to shore up a constantly growing Chinese demand; meaning less product on our shelves and higher prices being paid for loin, chops, bologna, hot dogs and yes… bacon.

In fact some of that bacon during the recent Presidential campaign became a visual aide and symbol for President Donald Trump during press conferences as a way to show how rising prices for bacon, translated to rising grocery prices and inflation. All of this, that long before Chinese hot air balloons and growing threats to Taiwan saw a Democrat administration give permission for a “historic” pork buyout.

Yes, without involving technology or oil at all, China has fired the first strategic salvo of seeing the weaponization of an American food supply.

Nowhere else in the United States in this pork war is the damage more dramatic and real than Beaver and Iron counties in Utah. A state where Smithfield announced it would “terminate” contracts with 26 hog farms; similar to its announcement it would close 35 hog farm sites in Missouri.

A 35-mile long pork processing operation, Circle Four Farms (The largest pork producing facility in WH’s American system.), along the border of the two counties that used to see 3 million hogs a year shipped to Clougherty Packing, Vernon, California (Another casualty of China now being able to better produce its own pork supply.). Circle Four is now nothing more than a ghost town-like landscape of empty farrowing barns, feed mills and containers, and deathly calm wastewater ponds rippling in Utah’s west desert wind.

A 35-mile long swath of desert that literally borders the outskirts of America’s largest military test and training range – not only in landmass but the largest contiguous block of overland supersonic-authorized restricted airspace in the contiguous United States. That is a footprint of 2,675 square miles of ground space and more than 19,000 square miles of airspace.

The range plays host to a variety of training and testing missions for the USAF, United States Army, and United States Marine Corps. The site is frequently used for testing of experimental military equipment, as well as ground and air military training exercises.

It has also been used as the landing site for sample returns in NASA’s planetary science missions, including comet material in the Stardust mission and the OSIRIS-REX mission to return material from asteroid Bennu. The UTTR was also used as the landing site for the Genesis sample return mission.

Why fly a hot air balloon over the place when you own a 35-mile long pig farm right next to the site where a large number of America’s military drone flights and experiments take place?

As Smithfield continues cancelling or breaking contracts as some maintain; there are those who are still going to say, “Oh, no big deal. It’s just with a few farmers who can sell their farms to subdivision developers and make a mint.”

No, it is a big deal because the first thing it is doing is to destroy a rural way of living and thriving in America. It is seeing the weaponizing of farming and its industrialization; where instead of the farmer and his or her family running the operation is being managed by foreign oligarchs in board rooms.

And while the farmer might be able to sell the land it’s a sale usually going to pay the farm mortgage leaving just enough profit to pay for a plot and burial.

So the next time you smell bacon and hear it sizzle and crack from the fry pan, think about whether or not you’ll be eating it with scrambled eggs or in dim sum; either way things and circumstances just might make it a bit hard to swallow.

Note: The opinions expressed herein are those of Clark Caras alone and do not represent those of Breaking Battlegrounds’ hosts or staff.