Exporting American Factory Farm Know-how: Behind the Scenes of a Global Hog Producer

I figured I was scratching the surface in my post on the role of factory farming in fostering “super bugs,” but I didn’t realize how much until I read Miguel’s treatise (originally posted on Facing South blog by Marek Kryda of Waterkeeper Alliance) about Smithfield Foods and hog-related pollution.

It’s a long read, but fascinating, sad, and scary. In the corporate world, Smithfield Foods is no doubt admired for bringing improved efficiency to what corporate types would refer to as an “inefficient industry.”

Miguel has poked behind the curtains so carefully erected by Smithfield, to give us a sense of the terrible repercussions of factory hog farming. I had heard previously about the destructive smells associated with large-scale hog farming. What he has done is to touch on all the ramifications of such farming—from the payoffs to politicians to the eradication of family farming to the suffering of the animals to the pollution and even to the inferior quality of the meat.

On this last point, Smithfield actually uses the lean pork as the basis of promotion on its web site, in describing the "lean generation advantage."

What makes confronting an entity like Smithfield so difficult is that the company is smart enough to not only buy political friends, but to buy friends in the nonprofit world; just take a look at this page highlighting the company’s support of a food bank.

Thanks to Miguel for sharing his perspective and first-hand experience in the U.S. and Poland.

Comments

[miguel]

This "treatise" was posted On a blog called Facing South. I thought it shed some light on the questions we all have.Like why did the Michigan dept of Ag go after Richard Hebron? Why did they have to take Doug Kirkpatrick's hogs and chickens too?Why did Michael Shmidt get raided and robbed by Ontario officials?
There is a name for the strategy that large agribusiness corporations use to take over a sector of the economy.It is called "agency capture".Big Pharma does this too.It takes over the FDA and uses the agency to run its competitors out of business.Smithfield-Con Agra and Dean-Suiza among other corporations have captured the USDA and many other agricultural agencies and are using them to further consolidate their hold on our food supply.I doubt that we will see the MDA or USDA ever truely prosecute a factory farm for their many continuous violations of the law. The MDA and USDA are only interested in eliminating businesses that they see as horning in on agribusiness's territory.
What does this mean for the future of our right to choose healthy food?The only hope to weaken those big corporations is to not give them our money. That means not buying anything that they produce.But how can we stop them from eliminating the sources of healthy food that we have worked so hard to support??