I heard about this about a month ago;
Smithfield Foods has been trying to scare us away from restricting its activities at its coronavirus-riddled Sioux Falls plant by warning that any disruption of its vital activities could lead to a meat shortage. Yet even as they lobbied for an executive order from the White House to immunize their facilities from state shutdown orders, Smithfield and other mega-meatmongers have been shipping more pork to China:
About a month ago I got a tip from a reader that a certain cold storage warehouse in Sioux Falls had about 9 months worth of Smithfield product stacked up in the facility ‘awaiting shipment’. I asked this person why don’t they just distribute it already in the United States, especially with some food shortages. His answer, “The labels are in Mandarin. It’s headed to China but are struggling to get it shipped.”
So while I understand supplying food to Americans as essential, I’m not certain Americans risking their lives to pack food for China is essential. It reminds me of the XL pipeline that ships oil from Canada through the US to be put on tankers in the Gulf that go to China.
And we wonder why some of us ‘vilify’ the pork packer.