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Another reason why the Chinese bought Smithfield

It’s generally thought that just assuring a steady supply of pork was the main reason behind China’s purchase of giant U.S. pork producer Smithfield.   

But renowned animal scientist Dr. Frank Mitloehner of the University of California-Davis, who has been spending time in China recently, says the Chinese had another motive as well—that being to reduce the huge pig mortality rate in their own country, which is about 40 percent of the one billion pigs they produce each year. 

“Four-hundred million of that one-billion will not be weaned from swine operations, meaning they will never make it to market because they died prematurely,” Mitloehner says, “That’s because they don’t have the veterinary care, they don’t have the nutrition, they don’t have the expertise it takes to raise those animals and make them valuable products at the end of their life—and they’re looking to us to assist them in doing so.” 

And what better way to get that production expertise and all that goes with it, Mitloehner says, than to buy a top U.S. pork producer like Smithfield.