As Congress considers the pork lobby’s number one priority in this upcoming Farm Bill, the so-called “Save Our Bacon Act” (SOB Act), lawmakers should ask one question: who does that lobby actually represent?
You know Smithfield Foods, the seemingly all-American brand behind Nathan’s Famous hot dogs? Recent filings show the company is actually 86.9 percent Chinese-owned.
Smithfield’s majority owner is WH Group, a conglomerate linked to the Chinese Communist Party that is the world’s largest pork producer and that controls over a quarter of America’s pork industry. On WH Group’s behalf, Smithfield helps govern and bankroll the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), Washington’s powerful pork lobby.
Although the Pork Council claims to be the voice of American farmers, it is China’s WH Group that has the most to gain from the lobby’s signature bill. The measure would nullify state laws setting minimum standards for how farm animals are raised, most notably banning “gestation crates,” metal cages barely larger than a pig’s body in which a mother pig cannot turn around for nearly her entire life. Thousands of small- and mid-size American farmers have invested to meet these standards because they offer a rare lifeline in today’s consolidated industry. Without them, the critical market these producers have carved out will collapse.
That’s exactly what China and its Washington lobby want, and the motivation is right out in the open. The Communist Party’s own China Weekly celebrated the SOB Act as a measure that “will significantly increase China’s share of the U.S. pork market.” The same article complained that U.S. state laws “tend to favor smaller farms in the United States and disadvantage multinational foreign-funded enterprises, weakening the ability of Chinese pork enterprises to operate efficiently.” In other words, the Communist Party’s own press says this bill will take market share from American family farms and hand it to Chinese companies.
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