Mexico halts Smithfield pork imports

Mexico has blocked all shipments from North Carolina, one of the world's largest pig producers, over concerns about the quality of pork products at the Smithfield Foods facility, the company said this week. The cessation of supplies from the Tar Heel plant in eastern North Carolina has hit the US pig industry . According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the ban on the supply of the company's products to the Mexican market came into force last Wednesday.  

Mexico was the largest EXPORT market for US pork by volume before being overtaken by CHINA in 2020. As a major buyer of ham, Mexico purchased almost $1.3 billion worth of American pork in 2019.

Smithfield, owned by the Hong Kong-listed WH Group, said the suspension is temporary and the company is working with authorities to resume supplies from the Tar Htl facility. The industry estimates that the plant processes about 34,500 pigs a day, about 7% of the total hog slaughter in the US. According to Keira Lombardo, Smithfield's chief administrative officer, Mexico is concerned about the quality of a particular batch of pigskins sold by the plant to a US third party company. The third-party company ended up exporting the skins to Mexico, she said.

“We have conducted a thorough internal investigation and have determined that the problem comes from an outside company and not the Smithfield Group as a whole or this Tar Heel facility,” Lombardo said.

Smithfield, the world's largest pork processor, owns several plants in the US and can ship pork to Mexico from facilities other than the Tar Heel plant if needed, said Steve Meyer, an economist at consulting firm Partners for Production Agriculture.