A little more than 3 years ago, a renewed commitment to worker health and safety began for Smithfield Foods. As a company we shall ensure the health, safety, and well being of our employees, visitors, vendors and the people living and working in communities near our facilities. Recently Smithfield Foods reviewed and reauthorized our Health and Safety Policy statement. As a company we will provide the human, physical and financial resources necessary to meet the commitment outlined in this policy. To review this policy with your teams, click here.

Thanks to Smithfield Foods and Smithfield Packing employees in Smithfield, VA, an exciting project is once again taking place to make this holiday season, a truly special time for the children of Isle of Wight County — children who normally would not be able to experience the joy of a visit from Santa. 

For the past several years Smithfield employees have provided necessities and holiday gifts to children through the Luter Family YMCA Holiday Program. The Smithfield-Luter Foundation, with support from Smithfield Foods and Smithfield Packing employees, has assumed the responsibility for the continuation of this program now known as “Smithfield CARES”.

Previously administered by Frances Luter and Margaret Smith, in conjunction with the Luter Family YMCA, this program, which last year provided gifts for nearly 400 children, has grown to the point where more involvement was needed. In addition to the children, the program will also provide necessities and gifts for over 100 senior citizens.

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We are pleased to post the inaugural Smithfield Foods Ethics and Compliance Newsletter. Each quarterly issue will contain important information to keep you abreast, such as updates of the Companies ethics and compliance activities, examples of ethical dilemmas and relevant compliance and ethics related articles. Click here to download the newsletter.

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Smithfield Prod, the local subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, will extend the famous Comtim brand countrywide by opening two new retail stores for its own products in Bacau and Braila, seven months after the inauguration of the first store in Timisoara. Smithfield Prod sells fresh pork meat and a range of processed products sold under the Comtim brand including: Sunca Freidorf, Salam Porc, Parizer Porc, Cremwurst Porc, Sunca Rustica, and Toba Paprika. The two stores will open in December and cover a standard sale area of 140-150 m2. Presently, Smithfield Romania is operating the largest slaughterhouse in the country.

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If you’ve checked out www.murphybrownllc.com you know there’s a video farm tour that allows you to look inside our farms and see firsthand how we put our commitment to product quality, food safety and animal welfare into practice. Recently that same farm tour was posted on You Tube and it’s getting a significant number of hits. Check it out for yourself and feel free to share it with friends and family. It’s a great way to share what we do!

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On October 1st, Smithfield Prod, Romania, launched its internship program in close partnership with local Universities.

Being an intern in one of the world's leading meat processing companies was an attractive proposition for students. For a period of three months they not only create a research paper or case study under the supervision of a Smithfield Prod coordinator, they also gain practical experience on the job.

“We want the Intern program at Smithfield Prod to be long-term,” said General Manger Morten Jensen. “We want to offer the best students an opportunity to join us, possibly for a career with our company.”

Smithfield Prod welcomed the following interns:

1. Marius Driga - Tehnic al Departament  Intern
2. Alexandru Buzzi - Sales Intern
3. Alexandra Mineata – Accounting Intern
4. Oana Szakacs - PR Intern
5. Sendre Bogdan – Production Intern

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Back to School 
“Back to School” is a Smithfield Ferme project aimed at supporting the pupils of local communities where Smithfield carries out its activities, and consists of supplying students with school supplies and school textbooks, to facilitate their access to education.

In the last three years, over 5,700 students of more than 36 localities from Timis and Arad counties benefited from the program.

From September 16th-23rd, the “Back to School” caravan, comprised of more than 20 volunteers of Smithfield Ferme employees and members of local authorities, visited 36 local schools. Approximately 3,000 children from these pre-schools and schools benefited from the program’s support. This fall, the program also furnished the first grade classroom of Nitchidorf Local School, Timis County.

Book donations
Thanks to the support of the Chamber of Commerce from Smithfield, the Smithfield High School and the Smithfield school system, Timisoara Shakespeare High school students received a donation of 840 English books. The donation was very timely, at the beginning of the school year, and provides educational support for disciplines in extra-curricular areas: 300 for classes of English Language and Literature, roughly 300 for the Humanities and Social Studies department, particularly for History and Geography. The 21 books in Spanish have been sent to the J.L. Calderon high school, which teaches Spanish as a foreign language.

Smithfield actively supports education activities, and participated this year in the Banat Region Teaching Day, a seminar organized in October by Nikolaus Lenau High school in Timisoara, offering meat and pork products.

European Mobility Day -- Day Without Cars
This year, more than 60 children from Deta, Timis County, participated in bicycle and roller-skates contests to celebrate “European Mobility Day“ and “Day without cars” on September 22nd. The events were sponsored by Smithfield Ferme in collaboration with the Romanian Environmental Protection Agency to raise environmental awareness.

Organic fertilizer campaign  –  Public harvest experiment
The representatives of Smithfield Ferme have participated on October 6th in the harvesting of a Pioneer hybrid seed corn crop from a plot of land fertilized with organic fertilizers from Smithfield-owned farms. The experiment is part of Smithfield Ferme’s program to promote agriculture using organic fertilizers, in partnership with Pioneer Hi-Bred Seeds – the Romanian subsidiary. The program was developed under the supervision of the Office for Pedological and Agrochemical Studies from Timişoara (OSPA), the third partner with whom Smithfield Ferme has been working for 3 years.

The collaboration between Smithfield Ferme, which provided for the organic fertilizer (at a concentration of 60 cubic meters/ha), and Pioneer, which provided the corn hybrids, consisted in the cultivation of an experimental field with corn, on an area of 9 ha, made available by an independent farmer.

The results speak for themselves, as the crop obtained from the experimental land reached record levels, varying between 10.8 tons/ha and 13 tons/ha, depending on the type of the hybrid seed sowed.

Representatives of the mayoralty of Jimbolia, OSPA Timisoara, the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Banat, and dealers in agricultural products also participated in the event.

Smithfield Ferme fertilizes every year 20,000 hectares with organic fertilizers, applied by modern injection and scarification techniques, following plans and analyses which help determine the optimum quantity of fertilizers required for the crop, depending on each and every plot of land. These plans and analyses are authorized and issued by the Office for Pedological and Agrochemical Studies, a specialized technical body of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Internal program  - Vocational trainings and internships in farms
Smithfield Ferme is already implementing 4 ongoing vocational training programs: Herdspersons Training Program; Internship Training Program; Farm Manager Trainee Program; and the Monthly Training Program. At present, another program, the Maintenance Training Program, is under implementation.

INDUCTION TRAINING PROGRAM is useful to explain the Biosecurity Management System, the labor health and safety procedures, the Environmental Management System, as well as other useful information.

HERDSPERSONS TRAINING PROGRAM addresses the animal caretakers and the veterinarian/animal husbandry technicians. This programs aims at training skilled employees who would provide support to the new employees, as well as identifying potential successors of departmental managers. This training, consisting of a practical and a theoretical part, is conducted within each and every department. The duration of a course is 3 months for every level, with the requirement to promote 3 such courses in order to reach the higher level.

INTERNSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM addresses the students of the School of Veterinarian Medicine and Animal Husbandry. It is a training program consisting of 4 modules, equivalent with undergoing the internal technical training up to the level of H4 employee (herdsperson 4; employee without university studies upon completing the technical training modules). Each module consists of 3 courses for each department within Smithfield farms. An interesting fact is that the students attend this training by rotation in various farms, so that they learn the particularities of each and every farm. The training inside the farm is conducted by the Head of Department (HOD) and overseen by the farm manager. The students of module four have the possibility to choose the location of the training which may be in a feed mill, boar center or farm.

Smithfield Ferme provides also the FARM MANAGER TRAINEE PROGRAM for the employees with higher education in the position of UIT (graduates from university studies in training) and HOD. This program focuses on training in the production process, and other processes.

Within the monthly training, the following topics have already been approached: instructions to use fodder lines; understanding the flow in sow farms; animal wealth; abortions and infertility; colostrum; feeders in growing and fattening farms and understanding the sowing target. Other topics such as: fodder costs, piglet processing, factors affecting the number of piglets/sow are under development. Topics like: litter box management, non-fertility status and heat detection, the selection guide will be approached in the following session.

Be one of us! -program for supporting the communities traditions is still ongoing…

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