The short answer is I have no idea, and I really didn’t ponder it until someone told me the other day that many of the execs with Wholestone are former Smithfield management.
There is also the question of who really owns the CAFOs that produce the meat for these plants? Is it local farmers or are they simply contracted by the packers like Smithfield and Wholestone which have ownership in the farms? Maybe the producers are merely leasing from the packers?
I don’t know. But I do know that is how it works with poultry.
In my couple minutes of digging on the interwebs I could find little about Chinese investors in CAFOs and Smithfield’s possible investment in Wholestone. Maybe this is a backdoor plan to close the DTSF plant and transfer all operations to the new plant?Â
Wondering if one of Sioux Falls’ super talented investigative journalists will dig into this and find a connection, or maybe NO connection. Oh, that’s right, we don’t have any of those in Sioux Falls but we do have a lot of hog sh!t.