USDA terminates Chinese-owned Smithfield farm aid contract

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Agriculture terminated a $240,000 purchase contract with Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods that had been awarded under the Trump administration’s agricultural trade bailout program, a move taken at the company’s request, a department spokesman told Reuters on Friday.

The move comes weeks after Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, one of the country’s biggest farm states and the biggest hog-producing state, slammed Smithfield for receiving what he said was aid from the USDA that was meant to help American farmers hurt by China’s trade tariffs.

“Smithfield requested to terminate their contract awarded under the Food Purchase and Distribution Program. USDA has agreed to the termination,” Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the USDA, told Reuters.

Murtaugh said the transfer of funds for the food purchase contract had not yet taken place, and that Smithfield’s request to cancel the contract was received on Nov. 13.

-snip-

BUSINESS NEWS NOVEMBER 16, 2018 / 1:40 PM / UPDATED 22 MINUTES AGO
Humeyra Pamuk
3 MIN READ


Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-smithfield-foods/usda-terminates-chinese-owned-smithfield-farm-aid-contract-idUSKCN1NL2BZ

[pecosbob]

1. I think he's staring 2020 right in the eyes

First he jumps from Judiciary to Finance and then he cleans up Trump's little mess.

[rurallib]

3. Chuckles isn't up in 2020 - Phony Joni (Ernst) is

and he's a god here anyway (Iowa). Don't ask me why, I can't figure it out.
I am pretty sure Smithfield has a big plant in Iowa that will probably lay people off because of this. Doubt anyone will care though.

[keithbvadu2]

2. Are any republicans refusing Donald's socialist giveaway?

Are any republicans refusing Donald's socialist giveaway?

[underpants]

4. Tar Heel plant 30,000 a day

Smithfield Foods to Expand Its Tar Heel, NC, Plant

Smithfield's Tar Heel facility is the largest pork processing plant in the world and produces fresh pork products for customers across the globe, the company said. Currently, the facility employs nearly 5,000 people and processes more than 30,000 hogs each day

https://www.porkbusiness.com/article/smithfield-foods-expand-its-tar-heel-nc-plant

[alwaysinasnit]

5. Grassley, that self-serving bastard, has a lot of nerve hammering Smithfield.

Grassley pressed the Trump administration this spring to relieve farmers who have been pummeled by Chinese tariffs on their exports amid the wider trade war.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/09/28/sen-charles-grassley-apply-bailout-money-farmers-under-white-house-program/?utm_term=.205bb183aa3e

[Farmer-Rick]

6. And every single Communist China Smithfield contracted hog farmer has a huge cesspool of pig crap

"Though corporate farmers call them “lagoons,” I hesitate to use that word. Really, they’re cesspools: unlined open-air pits, often containing millions of gallons of hog feces and urine. North Carolina is home to the second-largest number of hogs in the country, and it hosts some 3,000 of these cesspools, their liquid colored a vivid pink. In this system, known locally as “lagoon and sprayfield,” untreated waste from these pools is sprayed onto adjacent cropland.

And there’s a lot of waste. In North Carolina’s Duplin County, the 2.2 million hogs produce twice as much manure as the waste from the entire New York City metro area — and not one ounce goes to a sewer plant. It just sits there, waiting "

Each cesspool sits there stinking up the whole rural environment.

So China farms their pigs here in the US using the most unsanitary conditions, spraying untreated cesspool waste out onto edible crops. What could possibly go wrong with that awful mess?