[sparkscoffee] China buying our biggest pork producer
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Sblumen123@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: sparkscoffee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 18:32:27 -0400
Everyone
Instead of selling U.S. bonds we are selling U.S. Companies to China and
looks like there is no end. Those
Capitalists sure are clever with deep pockets. Saw it on TV and the talk
was that they paid 30% over
Smithfields value and their State owned bank loaned the money. Ain't
Captilism wonderful? Didn't see it in
the newspaper, only on PBS TV.
Stanley
*
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(http://grist.org/food/pork-it-over-u-s-okays-chinese-purchase-of-its-largest-pig-company/#)
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Pork it over: U.S. OKs Chinese purchase of its largest pig company
By _Nathanael Johnson_ (http://grist.org/author/nathanael-johnson/)
10 Sep 2013 11:32 AM _comments_
(http://grist.org/food/pork-it-over-u-s-okays-chinese-purchase-of-its-largest-pig-company/#disqus_thread)
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× _Just Chaos_ (http://www.flickr.com/people/7326810@N08/)
Well they’ve done it. The U.S. government has signed off on a deal to sell
the biggest player in the domestic pork industry to a Chinese firm, merging
the two biggest pig producers in the world. The feds had held up the
merger _since May_
(http://grist.org/news/smithfield-worlds-largest-pork-producer-could-be-sold-to-a-chinese-company/)
to determine if it might be a threat
to national security. And now they’ve decided that no, foreign control of
the bacon supply will not imperil our country’s integrity. You may feel
differently.
And actually there are people who have real concerns. Here’s Sen. Debbie
Stabenow (D-Mich.), for example, writing at _Politico_
(http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/united-states-food-innovation-96238.html)
:
Smithfield may only be the beginning. Experts testified at a recent Senate
Agriculture Committee hearing that China is watching this deal and waiting
in the wings to purchase more U.S. food companies… To be sure, the purchase
of one American food company does not jeopardize America’s food
independence. But Smithfield is our largest pork producer — will China or
other
countries seek to purchase our largest poultry, or dairy, or corn producers
next? Is it in America’s security interests if in a decade or two our food
supply is 30, or 60, or 90 percent foreign owned?
Stabenow’s _whole op-ed_
(http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/united-states-food-innovation-96238.html)
is a good primer for this issue, and worth
a read. Essentially, China has a lot to gain when its companies buy
American businesses, but China is more restrictive when it comes to American
companies buying its businesses.
I’ve spent a lot of time _reporting on swine farming_
(http://harpers.org/archive/2006/05/swine-of-the-times/) , and Smithfield
grows hogs in a way
that I find repellent: It’s a form of agriculture that squeezes farmers,
hurts pigs, and smells like hair burning in a pit toilet. But it’s also
amazingly efficient in converting feed to perfectly identical cuts of meat.
Shuanghui, the Chinese company buying Smithfield, wants access to that
expertise.
Say what you like about Smithfield — it’s not _throwing dead pigs into
rivers these days_
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/29/dead-pigs-china-water-supply) .
Brutally efficient is better than just plain brutal.
Still, I eagerly await the day when the much more humane _Niman Ranch_
(http://www.nimanranch.com/Index.aspx) announces that it’s buying Shuanghui.
Investors still could reject the Smithfield-Shanghui deal, but most
observers are predicting that they are unlikely to do so.
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