Smithfield Foods, including its extensive hog farming operations, is owned by the Hong Kong-based WH Group Ltd., which purchased the company in 2013. As of 2025, WH Group remains the primary owner with over 90% ownership. In late 2024, Smithfield announced a restructuring, selling some hog operations to Murphy Family Ventures, although the overall company is still controlled by WH Group.
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a Chinese-owned pork producer and food-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia. Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter and his son, the company is the largest pig and pork producer in the world.
Wan Long (Chinese: 万隆; born 1940) is a Chinese billionaire businessman, the chairman and CEO of WH Group, the world's largest pork company, with subsidiaries including Smithfield Foods in the US.
Smithfield Foods is acquiring Tyson Foods' hog production operations for three million shares of stock worth about $80 million. Tyson's Pork Group Inc. has roughly 110,000 sows in the Midwest and North Carolina.
Who is the largest shareholder of Smithfield Foods?
As of April 2025, WH Group, a publicly listed entity on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX: 0288.HK), maintains substantial control over Smithfield Foods. WH Group beneficially owns nearly 93% of Smithfield Foods' outstanding shares, solidifying its position as the primary Smithfield Foods owner.
In 2024, U.S. pork producers exported $8.6 billion of pork products. Also in 2024, more than 367 thousand metric tons of U.S. pork were exported to China, worth over $1.1 billion. Approximately 55% of pork variety meats (offal) exports go to China.
As one of the top chicken and meat suppliers in the U.S., Tyson provides products not only to KFC but also to other fast food chains, including Taco Bell and McDonald's. Tyson also functions as the parent company of other well-known brands, such as Jimmy Dean, Ball Park, and Sara Lee.
The remainder included a wide variety of products, many associated with Asian cuisine. Despite the rapid growth, less than 1 percent of the U.S. food supply comes from China. For a few specific items, like apple juice, garlic, canned mandarin oranges, fish, and shrimp, China is a major supplier.
On the one hand, WH Group is a private company that's traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Smithfield CEO Larry Pope testified to Congress in 2013 that WH Group was not managed or run by the Chinese government, and Smithfield itself is still managed by American executives.
The 2001 Forbes magazine list was topped by Liu Yongxong and Liu Yonghao, two brothers from Sichuan who made a fortune in the animal feed business and have been described as China's first billionaires. Their company, the Hope Group, had assets worth $1 billion in 2001.
Who owns most of the pork industry in the United States?
Who's the Largest Pork Producer in the United States? The largest pork producer in the U.S. is Smithfield Foods. Though it was founded and is based in the U.S., Smithfield was purchased in 2013 by a Chinese company called the WH Group, which still owns it today.
Where is the largest pork processing plant in the United States?
"The largest pork processor in America–by far–is Smithfield Foods, whose massive plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina is known as “porkopolis.” "The million square-foot plant, said to be the largest slaughterhouse in the world, is a heavily automated disassembly line, processing up to 32,000 hogs per day.
Smithfield Foods Inc has its primary listing on NASDAQ. You can trade Smithfield Foods Inc with a Saxo account, alongside thousands of other stocks worldwide.
The top consumer of pork in 2021 continued to be China, taking into account its special economic regions Hong Kong, Macau, and Mainland China, whose consumptions were about 61, 52, and 37 kg/inhabitant respectively. By 2022, consumption in China is expected to grow by 4.1%, reaching almost 52 kg/inhabitant.
Smithfield Foods became a wholly- owned subsidiary of Shuanghui International Holdings Limited, creating a leading global pork enterprise. The following year, Shuanghui International Holdings Limited was renamed WH Group.
Muyuan's pig farm near Nanyang is the world's largest. Its pig barns are multistory which allows for higher density. The farm is farrow-to-finish meaning that pigs taken from breeding to slaughter on-site. Production at this farm is targeted at 2.1 million pigs a year.
Nearly all chicken meat eaten in the UK comes from a place like Lower Farm. "This intensive chicken farming goes on behind closed doors," says Dil Peeling, campaigns director at charity Compassion in World Farming (CWF) . "It's hidden from people. They still have this image of chickens scratching around in a farmyard."
Due to economic reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping, industrial agriculture became favored over small farms, making it much easier for China to produce boatloads of cheap pork.
And not only is ractopamine allowed, it's likely to be found in most of the pork you may eat, estimated to be given to as many as 80 percent of pigs in the United States. The drug is used to promote growth, increase muscle mass and improve feed efficiency in livestock.
Genuine Smithfield hams [are those] cut from the carcasses of peanut-fed hogs, raised in the peanut-belt of the Commonwealth of Virginia or the State of North Carolina, and which are cured, treated, smoked, and processed in the town of Smithfield, in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
