Wake Up and Haul the Bacon

[Anonymous]

I don’t see why this should be a problem if the container is cleaned.  Is there some reason why the container can’t be cleaned?  The entire food processing industry requires cleanliness of equipment, and is successful at providing that cleanliness. 

[Bonas]

So Kosher Products cant use the same trailers railroad cars as non kosher food? I post the question on ASK the RABBI and get back to you on this.

[BroadwayLion]

greyhounds

1)  The Chinese put the pork on a ship at a west coast port.  This would provide a westbound refrigerated load for rail movement and create an empty reefer container in California.  That's an opportunity, not a problem.  California produces almost half of the fresh fruits and vegetables in the US.  This produce moves great distances to eastern population centers such as the New York area, Chicago, and in to eastern Canada.  The railroads will have an opportunity to move reefer equipment both ways under revenue load.

Pardon me, but you cannot do that. It is simply NOT KOSHER to transport produce in the same car as Pork.

IIRC, ditto poultry and other meats. cross contamination, you know. Yes, steam clean them, we do that anyway, but still? FDA can be just as bad as the FRA.

ROAR

[carnej1]

Semper Vaporo

I'd rather they bought the pork and left the company as U.S. owned (keep the profits HERE!).

 

The only way I could see the profits staying here is if only citizens of the US were allowed to hold stock...

[jrbernier]

  Grains and thing like peas are mixed into hog feed; but how much is grown locally and can be easily 'trucked' to to the 'farm'?  I suspect that the hog operations are close to the processing plant.

  Once the hogs are processed, this is an opportunity to ship them via rail.  Refrigerated international containers make sense.  Larger refrigerated domestic containers(53') might make more sense if the ship is a large 'freezer' and the hogs will need to be unloaded/loaded.

  Most livestock growing and processing is quite regional, and there are lots of hog operations in the Midwest - I would not worry about lack of pork chops for Midwesterner's!

  Smithfield's daily production capacity in 2010 was about 113,200 hogs/day.  Tyson's capacity was 67,600 hogs/day, and Hormel's capacity was 37,000 hogs/day.  The Hormel pants in Austin, MN and Fremont, NE.are in the Midwest.  The top 5 producers(including Smithfield) produce 38% of the processed pork in the US.  There are lots of other small operations that produce the other 62% of the processed pork.

Jim

[John WR]

Semper Vaporo

I'd rather they bought the pork and left the company as U.S. owned (keep the profits HERE!).

"For the deal to move forward, Shuanghui International needs a regulatory go-ahead from Washington officials. A host of scandals has hit China’s poorly regulated food suppliers in recent years, and concerns have been raised about some of Shuanghui’s past practices. Chinese state media reported that pork from a Shuanghui subsidiary had been tainted by the chemical clenbuterol, which can make meat leaner but sickens humans. Shuanghui promised to destroy thousands of tons of its product to allay customer concerns."

--The Washington Post, May 30, 2013.

I just hope the government does what it has to do to keep our pork supply safe.  

[Semper Vaporo]

I'd rather they bought the pork and left the company as U.S. owned (keep the profits HERE!).

 

[greyhounds]

I read that a Chinese company is buying the largest US pork producer, Smithfield.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/29/us-shuanghui-idUSBRE94S0K920130529

So what does this have to do with US railroads?  Well, it may be a great market development opportunity.  I can't see Smithfield as a smart investment as it now exists.  Meat packing is a tough business with low and unpredictable margins.  Speculation is that the Chinese company wants to bring more pork in to China, and therein lies the railroad opportunity.

Smithfield's largest plant is in Tar Heel, NC.  This plant has the capacity to kill and process 32,000 hogs per day.  (That seems to be too big.  Newer hog plants haven't been built to that scale.  The newer facilities run around 18,000 - 19,000 per day.  Just as there are economies of scale, there are diseconomies of scale if you build too big.)  Smithfield also has smaller plants in the Midwest.  Iowa being the center of pork production in the US.

So, let's just say that the Chinese complete the deal and significantly increase their importation of US pork.  (There are few, if any, places in the world where quality pork can be produced as efficiently as it is produced in the US.)  What will that mean for the US railroads?

Well, first of all, more hogs mean more grain.  It takes 7.7 pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork.  The grain has to be moved to the hogs.  US farmers can produce more grain.  And the US railroads can haul it.

Second, the pork has to be moved to China.  Two scenarios come to mind:

1)  The Chinese put the pork on a ship at a west coast port.  This would provide a westbound refrigerated load for rail movement and create an empty reefer container in California.  That's an opportunity, not a problem.  California produces almost half of the fresh fruits and vegetables in the US.  This produce moves great distances to eastern population centers such as the New York area, Chicago, and in to eastern Canada.  The railroads will have an opportunity to move reefer equipment both ways under revenue load.

2) The Chinese put the pork out of Tar Heel on a ship at an east coast port and use the improved Panama Canal to get it to China.  This would take some of the production of that huge plant out of the supply chain to equally huge US eastern population centers in the northeast and Florida.  Since the  folks in those populations aren't going to quit eating pork chops the supply will have to be shifted to Midwestern origins.  That's long haul where rail has an economic advantage over trucking.

I smell great opportunity here.  If the government doesn't get in the way. 

Don't fret about your own access to pork.  The US produces pork as efficiently as any place in the world.  Maybe more efficiently than any place in the world. The farmers and packers will produce more pork to meet increased demand without breaking a sweat.  Currently, about 22% of hogs slaughtered in the US go to export.

If the government let's this one go through we could have another Bonanza that could rival the oil developed in shale. There are a lot of people in China.  And they seem to like pork. Of course, that's a big IF.