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Smithfield Hog Production Division, formerly Premium Standard Farms, Inc. (PSF), is a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, Inc.
 | This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments, a violation of Wikipedia's terms of use. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. (April 2021) |
| Company type | Subsidiary of Smithfield Foods |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1988 |
| Headquarters | Princeton, Missouri |
Premium Standard Farms was the second-largest pork producer and the sixth-largest processor in the United States until Smithfield Foods acquired it in 2007.[1][2][3]
In 2013, the company was acquired by Shuanghui International, China’s largest pork producer.[4]
PSF was founded in 1988 in Smithfield, Virginia,[5] with the aim of creating a standardized method to produce premium pork. To accomplish this goal, the company decided to pursue full vertical integration—a first for pork producers in the United States.[citation needed]
In 2007, Smithfield acquired Premium Standard Farms for $800 million in cash, stock, and debt.[6][5]
Locations
Smithfield Hog Production is headquartered in Princeton, Missouri[citation needed] and owns a pork processing plant located in Milan, Missouri.[7] At one time, the company operated 132 company-owned farms and 109 contract farms in the state of Missouri, in addition to a leased farm and eight feed mills.[8]
In July 2021, the company closed its original slaughter plant in Smithfield, Virginia.[8][9]
In February 2023, Smithfield Foods closed its meatpacking plant in Vernon, California.[10][11][12]
In May 2023, the company closed 37 sow farms in Missouri.[8][13][14]
In October 2023 the company shut down a pork plant in Charlotte, North Carolina.[15]
In December 2023 Smithfield ended contracts with 26 hog farms in Utah citing oversupply.[15]
Methane harvesting
Valley View Farm, near Green Castle, Missouri, is a finishing site that houses more than 100,000 hogs at any given time. Half of the site's waste lagoons are covered to allow the harvesting of methane gas.[16] Smithfield also has farms that engage in methane harvesting in Bethany and Princeton.[17]
Smithfield built a connection from its farms in northern Missouri to the pipeline that supplies natural gas to Milan, Missouri. Fuel produced by Smithfield is mixed directly into Milan's gas supply.[18] This project took 18 months.
Smithfield has formed a partnership with Roeslein Alternative Energy and Monarch Bioenergy, to help produce biogas.[18][17] In early 2020, Smithfield and Roesleing Alternative Energy announced an additional $45 million investment in Monarch. This money will be used to expand Monarch's renewable natural gas capture and distribution to at least 85% of Smithfield's Missouri farms.[19]
Smithfield's gas harvesting efforts are part of its stated goal of reducing its greenhouse gas footprint by 25%. This is using the company's 2010 emissions as the base for calculation.[18][17]
In 2010, a Jackson County, Missouri, jury awarded seven neighboring farmers $11 million in damages for odors emanating from a 4,300 acre finishing farm near Berlin in Gentry County, Missouri where an estimated 200,000 hogs are processed annually. In 2006, six plaintiffs were awarded $4.6 million from the lawsuit (the largest in a hog farm odor issue), originally filed in 1999.[1][2]
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