IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 5
processing and hog production company, Agroindustrial Del Noroeste
(ADN). 28 Smithfield also acquired meatpacking companies in Canada,
France, and Poland, where it is attempting to construct hog production
facilities that would be among the largest in the world. Polish farmers who
survived collectivism and competition from government-owned hog
factories, with 80% of farmland still in private hands, now fear that they
may not survive capitalism. 29 Smithfield Foods is encountering staunch
opposition from family farmers in Poland, who have been joined by
workers and other constituencies. 30,31 , 32 , 33
Moreover, animal factory investors from other countries are settling in the
United States to get away from stricter regulations in their own countries.
For example, hog factories owned by Japanese investors now operate in
the United States in Texas and Wyoming. Dutch farmers are escaping a
crackdown on pollution in the Netherlands by setting up large dairies in
Indiana. 34
The expansion of U.S.-based corporate hog factories into other, often less
developed or economically struggling countries, either through exports of
U.S.-produced meat or through acquisition of local businesses, has the
potential to harm emerging independent agricultural sectors in those
countries.
In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the borders
for U.S. pork exports to Mexico but allowed the U.S. to bar Mexican pork
imports ostensibly due to disease concerns. 35 Then, when pork prices
worldwide plunged in 1997 and 1998, sales of U.S. pork to Mexico again
surged, forcing many Mexican hog farmers out of business. Many of them
went to towns or came to the United States to find jobs.
Led by integrated packer-producers, the U.S. hog industry is claiming a
global market. Increasingly, independent family hog farmers in the United
States may find they have more interests in common with independent
family hog farmers in countries such as Poland, Brazil, and Mexico, where
hog factory investors are making inroads, than they do with the owners of
the hog factory down the road. The world is the new back yard.
However, as the following stories illustrate, hog factory owners do not
have to go overseas or across the border to find vulnerable populations in
need of economic development.
South Dakota
Bell Farms, LLP, is a North Dakota limited liability partnership that owns
hog factories in Colorado. As Colorado was strengthening its
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