Smithfield Hog Production Division

Smithfield Hog Production Division, formerly Premium Standard Farms, Inc. (PSF), is a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, Inc.

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]

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]

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]

• Archived official website of Premium Standard Farms