Smithfield Foods has cut one day per week from its slaughter
schedule at the world’s largest plant at Tar Heel, North Carolina, says Reuters
news agency.
The reduction from five to four days per week is blamed on
the reduction of hog production due to Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.
It’s estimated that five million piglets have been killed by
the virus, one million in January alone.
The virus first showed up in Illinois in April and has
spread across almost the entire hog-producing regions in the United States and
in January into Ontario.
