Smithfield Foods congratulates the winners of its 2009 Environmental Excellence Awards. The awards recognize personnel at Smithfield subsidiaries that look beyond compliance to focus on pollution prevention, enhanced environmental protection and stewardship, and compliance assurance.

Since its inception in 2001, this program has encouraged Smithfield subsidiaries to implement the company’s environmental policy and to practice excellent environmental stewardship by recognizing outstanding efforts in this area each year.

Congratulations to all who participated in this year’s Environmental Excellence Awards. Below is a list of this year’s winners.

Environmental Excellence Award, 1st Place

Best Recycling Of A Previous Year’s Project
Smithfield, Tar Heel; Team: Paul Wright, Sylwia LaBudde
Utilized Farmland - Denison's idea and re-nozzled the singers (natural gas) to save water and natural gas at substantial annual savings of $252,672 and 25,626 decatherms.

Cleaner/Greener Production Processes and/or Packaging
Smithfield, Wilson; Team: Phil Price, George Barnes
Reduced natural resources in the amount of 1,528,063 square feet of material annually.  The number of truck deliveries was also reduced by 48 annually, thereby saving fuel, wear and tear of vehicles, as well as cost of approximately $55,753 annually. 

Energy and Water Conservation
Farmland, Wichita; Team: Brian Nelson; Paul LaPoint
Added a photo sensor to control wash water for hot dog sticks saving 14% of overall plant water and 41% of rinse water.

Waste Reduction – Pollution Prevention
Animex Grupa Drobiarska S.A. ; Team: Jan Macura
Put in  a closed loop glycol system to replace single pass cooling water in hatchery saving 2.4MM gallons of water annually.

Environmental Management – ISO14001
Patrick Cudahy, Cudahy; Team: Gene Bridges, Carter Hanson
Closed onsite landfill and donated to the city to eliminate the environmental risk.

Community Outreach
Romania, Smithfield Prod; Team: Mihaela Rad, Lidia Basica, Radu Matei, Emanuel Popa, Cristina Berneanu, Liliana Nicola, Raluca Robota, Teodor Fenesan, Adrian Rus
Participated in a tree planting project with local Elementary school. Paid and planted 450 trees then started a paper recycling program. Funds from the recycling program were donated for the purchase of 40 additional trees.

Wastewater Handling and Treatment
Smithfield, Grayson; Team: Clif Evans/Terry O’Rourke
Changed system so that multiple chemicals for PH adjustment could be utilized based on economic impact resulting in lower chemical usage and substantial annual savings.

Environmental Excellence Award, 2nd Place

Cleaner/Greener Production Processes and/or Packaging
Farmland, Salt Lake City; Team: John Casias
Measured metrics on, and expanded to 5 distribution centers last year's trial (pilot) for sending only full trucks out with case ready product, saving over $300,000 in diesel shipping charges.

Best Recycling Of A Previous Year’s Project
North Side Foods, Cumming; Team: Eduardo Torres
The Georgia Plant installed a closed loop cooling system to maintain the recommended hydraulic operating temperature of their Formax machines. Previously all cooling water was being sewered at an operating volume of 31,680 gallons per five day work week. Yearly water savings 1,520,640 gallons / $12,400.93 water and sewage savings.

President’s Award Winners:

Environmental Management – ISO 14001 - Armour Eckrich, Junction City; Extreme Home Makeover production after a tornado; Donated time, employees, and $30,000 to the victims.

Energy and Water Conservation - John Morrell & Co – Engineering Department; Completed a company wide energy survey and found that head pressure in plant refrigeration systems could be decreased from factory settings to 125 with no adverse effects in plant cooling with an annual savings of over $400,000 in energy.

Wastewater Handling and Treatment - Murphy Brown, LLC; Hand Held computers were purchased for all farms to assist in their Nutrient Management programs – these hand held computers allow for instant real time uploading to central Murphy Brown computers and automated annualized reporting of all facility’s metrics.