By Tom Polansek
By Tom Polansek
SMITHFIELD, Virginia, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Smithfield Meals’ slaughterhouse in Virginia used to carve up pork for American sandwiches and vacation dinners. However staff now field up pig carcasses to ship to China, in response to staff, native officers and business sources.
The transformation on the Smithfield, Virginia, plant reveals how the worldwide meat business is adapting to revenue from African swine fever, a deadly pig illness that has killed thousands and thousands of hogs in China and turned the world’s prime pork shopper into a significant meat importer.
Purchased by China’s WH Group Ltd 0288.HK six years in the past for $4.7 billion, Smithfield Meals has retooled U.S. processing operations to direct meat to China, which produced half the world’s pork earlier than swine fever decimated the business.
The world’s largest pork processor operates a white, box-shaped meat plant in Smithfield, Virginia, house to eight,000 in addition to the corporate’s headquarters and a wider vacationer economic system constructed on its well-known hams, bacon and sausages.
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