Safety Farm - How Best Practices Keep Farm Safe

A group of advocates for agriculture and safety farm food security pushing federal regulators to prevent the sale of Smithfield Foods in Chinese food giant Shuanghui Holdings International.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that if the sale is made, it would be the largest acquisition of a U.S. company. According to a safety farm report from the St. Louis Dispatch seventeen groups group sent a letter to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ( CFIUS ), the Agency should block the sale of pork processor .

"The White House should refuse to sell food supply of the United States", Tim Gibbons of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center told the Chronicle. "Buying American farms Smithfield meatpacking industry returns to a consolidated global leaving rural communities to clear debris, while China has the flesh safety farm."

Members of the coalition that sent the letter to CFIUS, including the rural crisis Center, Food & Water Watch Missouri, Nebraska Farmers Union and support the sale could affect national food security, cause economic damage in rural communities, and safety farm could be a threat to national security.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon recently vetoed two safety farm bills that would allow one percent of Missouri farmland to be held by foreign companies.

Smithfield executives said the sale would increase the export of meat from domestic pigs to foreign markets, instead of driving to the domestic sale of pork imported from safety farm Asia. Last year, the United States exported about 12 percent of the pork to China.

Opponents point of sale to various food-related issues in China, including reports of adulterated and misbranded meat, and treatment of pigs with a drug that is dangerous to humans by a subsidiary of the safety farm bid by Smithfield.

"The agreement has been promoted as a means to facilitate exports of pork from the U.S. to China, but eventually Shuanghui could export pork to the United States," July 9 letter indicates the safety farm group. "Adoption of Smithfield pig breeding and processing technologies could allow reverse flow Shuanghui pork world ."