Sayonara, Smithfield

Fire up the chopsticks...

For all you folks out there who love Chinese food, rejoice! Now there will be even more of it than before, with the takeover of Smithfield Foods by Shuanghui International. Personally I don't eat ham and steer clear of pork, so it won't really impact me much. And don't get me wrong, I love Chinese things--in fact I employ chopsticks every chance I get. It just makes me nervous when I remember those recent news reports about the 16,000 dead pigs floating in the Chinese rivers, mucking up the water supply to several major cities. I'm pretty sure there were some ducks too.  Anyway, they've likely cleaned all that up by now.

I checked out Shuanghui and they seem nice enough, and in fact they promise to uphold the highest of standards. And really, they won't be sending us any dead pigs, they just want to sell our healthy ones over there.

Still, even though they call it a "merger," it is the largest takeover of an American company by China. It reminds me of the plot in the Albert Brooks novel, Twenty Thirty: The Real Story of What Happens to America, which was a flop a couple of years ago--I may be the only person whoever read it. In it, China rebuilds Los Angeles after a terrible earthquake destroys everything in the year 2030. They do a great job, of course, and it's the best city in America. Too bad China owns it. That's fiction, but this is fact: your next Thanksgiving Smithfield ham will be part Chinese. I wonder if that means you'll be hungry an hour later.