TOP STORY

U.S. Hog Giant Transforms Eastern Europe

Smithfield Foods, the Virginia-based pork giant, is transforming farming in Eastern Europe, closing down small-scale hog farming in Romania and Poland, much as it did in the United States in the 1990s.  "For centuries...peasant farmers here have eked a living from hogs, driving horses along ancient pocked roads and whispering ritual prayers on butchering day.  Old customs and jobs are dying and the air itself is changing, however, transformed by an American newcomer, Smithfield Foods. Almost unnoticed by the rest of the Continent, the agribusiness giant has moved into Eastern Europe with the force of a factory engine, assembling networks of farms, breeding pigs on the fast track, and slaughtering them for every bit of meat and muscle that can be squeezed into a sausage."  [New York Times]

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