Retroactively put corporate giant Smithfield Foods in compliance with Missouri anti-corruption farming law it had previously been in violation. Smithfield had purchased farm land in counties it was not allowed to be in.  

Opened up large loophole that allows foreign corporate interests to by-pass reporting their land purchases to the Missouri Department of Agriculture by simply filing a W-9 which would make accurate tracking of the amount of foreign owned farmland towards the 1% cap virtually impossible.  

Companies like JBS, the biggest meat packer in the world is Brazilian owned. They now own controling interests in the pork, chicken and been processing industries throughout the USA.  They can control the price and can funnel the profits out of the country.  The employees are notoriously badly treated and paid.  

Missouri State standards allow up to 17,499 hogs to be within 2000 feet of a residence and an unlimited number of hogs to be located 3000 feet from a residence. According to the EPA a CAFO with 4000 hogs can generate as much waste as a city of 16,000 people.  A Class 1A CAFO with (17,500 hogs+)  can generate as much waste as the entire city of St. Louis.

Missouri’s 2.8 million hogs can generate as much untreated waste as 11.2 million people which is nearly double the population of the entire State of Missouri.  This untreated raw waste includes viruses, parasites and antibiotic-resistant bacterial.  This waist is left behind in Missouri while the profits from these operations and the products are shipped overseas to it’s foreign owners. 

Some countries are parking money in farm land waiting for values to go up while others are purchasing to ensure the food supply for their citizens.  While the Missouri Department of Agriculture is supposed to track who owns what and how much is owned,  the 2015 Loophole from Senate Bill 12 makes it almost impossible to say.

According to the CDC COVID-19 outbreaks are tracked to 23 states in meat and poultry processing facilities that resulted in at least 16,233 cases (June 2020) ranging from 3.1 to 24.5% of employees.  Of those cases 87% occurred in racial and ethnic minorities.

Factors that have contributed to these numbers are close workplace contact, long work periods of up to 12 hour per day, share work spaces, shared transportation, congregated housing and frequent community contact with fellow workers.  Foreign workers are often housed by the processing facilities with little outside contact and in questionable living conditions.