Last month we told you that Morris, Smithfield’s senior corporate vice president of operations and engineering, was named by Meat & Poultry as its first-ever Operations Executive of the Year in its April issue. Morris was deservedly cited for his reputation for hard work, excellence, innovation and integrity.  

To read the rest of the article in Meat&Poultry’s April issue, go to www.meatpoultry.com

Ray will travel to Karima, Kenya, to be with members of the Kikuyu tribe. Along with other youth leaders and the 410 Bridge group, the group’s focus will be to expand an existing water project by building a water distribution system. This will allow the people of Karima to have greater access to clean and safe drinking water.

Additionally, the group will assist in the construction of a new school building at the primary school to help house all the students that attend school there.

Please check back for part two of this story when Ray returns with full post-trip details and pictures. 

Smithfield Foods has come a long way in making good food, responsibly, but such progress can only be attributed to a dedicated employee family which we are blessed to be a part of. In fact, such keen effort and determination are the principles upon which Smithfield was founded. We’re proud to say that our colonial hometown, Smithfield, Virginia, is our nation’s ham capital and birthplace to a storied holiday ham tradition. We’ve been providing customers with the finest hams and pork products for over two centuries, and today we are a $12 billion global food company and leader in numerous packaged meat categories. Some of our popular brands include Farmland, Smithfield, Eckrich, Armour and John Morrell. 

Season’s Greetings and Happy New Year from all of us in the Smithfield Foods family!

Browse our special holiday hams and gifts here. Or if you’re looking for the perfect holiday recipe, take a page from Paula Deen’s book!

After joining the government affairs department of PSF’s processing business in 1993, his role with the company has continued to grow as he held a variety of positions before being named to his current title in 2002.

While the challenges Brian and the entire PSF team have faced are substantial, the company’s commitment to the environment, along with the marketplace trends and weather patterns, all have spurred PSF to create new and innovative ways to meet the diverse challenges of animal agriculture. For example, excessive rainfall during the past three years has challenged Brian and his team to develop new and innovative approaches to safely and successfully land-apply excess water while continuing to protect the environment. His team is constantly developing new technologies, ways to reduce costs, and ways to better recycle and reuse resources to the benefit of the environment. Among their chief accomplishments is the development of Next Generation Technology, born from 10 years of research, to address odor.

Brian and the PSF team view these challenges as opportunities to learn and to apply their expertise in new ways. He remarked that in order to effectively respond to all these pressures, the company has needed to adopt an attitude of teamwork.

“No one person makes or breaks anything,” Brian said. He attributed the success of the company to the combined efforts of people, such as their land application team, production team, legal team, environmental team, and the company’s leadership. “Everyone is involved in this effort,” Brian stated, “all the way up to the president of the company. Everyone must understand the environmental management system and how they should do their part. There must be accountability at every level.”

Premium Standard Farms is a subsidiary of Murphy-Brown, LLC. Click here to learn more about PSF and their environmental systems.

Best described as a high-energy individual, John is involved in almost every aspect of safety imaginable, both here at Smithfield and in his personal life. When he isn’t flying around the country doing safety inspection audits till the wee hours in the morning for one of our facilities, he is serving his community with one of his many certifications. He is certified in areas of law enforcement, fire fighting, Hazmat, counter-terrorism, and paramedics. Additionally he serves on safety boards/councils both locally and nationally. Tignor also was one of the folks that responded to Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks.

Here at Smithfield, his job is to ensure that our employees are safe and that injuries are as infrequent as possible. However, he also ensures that they receive the best possible quality of care if these injuries do happen.

He has seen change in the way Smithfield manages employee safety over the five years he’s been part of the company.

“When I was being interviewed for the job, Larry Pope told me that employee safety was more important than our biggest customer, ” Tignor said. “I’ve seen it become an even bigger priority now through the implementation of the EIPMS (Employee Injury Prevention Management System).”

Tignor has big dreams for the safety program at Smithfield, including the company’s participation in the OSHA VPP (voluntary protection program) Corporate Pilot Program, which according to the U.S. Department of Labor Web site is designed for organizations that “demonstrate a strong commitment to employee safety and health and VPP.” Tignor sees that program as the ultimate prize for Smithfield’s safety efforts. “It’s a lofty goal, but I think we can get there.”

The Peninsula SPCA was established in 1963, and its mission is to advocate and provide for the humane care and welfare of animals in their community. Henry joined the group in 2007 after the untimely death of his dog “Little Bear.” Along with his wife, he wanted find a way to help animals find adoptive homes so other families could enjoy them as much as his wife and he had enjoyed Little Bear. They decided to give a donation to the Peninsula SPCA and established what has come to be known as the “Little Bear Fund.” This fund (now containing over $19,000) allows the SPCA to treat otherwise adoptable injured animals that would normally be euthanized because of their injuries. Since its creation, the Little Bear Fund has helped many animals obtain surgeries and then find adoptive homes, including one severely abused dog that needed to have both eyes removed.

Henry doesn’t see any conflict between his position at Smithfield and his passion for the humane care of animals. “It’s all about humane treatment,” Henry noted. “Agricultural animals are raised for a purpose, and we just need to ensure they are treated as well as possible while in our care.” He talked about his days many years ago working in a pork processing plant before working with Smithfield, and the abuse he witnessed there. “We have policies and procedures in place here at Smithfield to make sure we don’t tolerate animals being treated that way. There’s no reason for any kind of abuse to happen, and it breaks my heart when it does.”

He is excited about a recent restructuring of the leadership of the Peninsula SPCA; they have a new board and a new vision that includes a policy they call an “Adoption Guarantee.” This policy means that the Peninsula SPCA will find homes for 100 percent of adoptable animals that come into their facility. “It’s going to be a long road. We won’t be there in half a year, a year, or maybe even in a few years, but it’s where we’re headed and it’s the right thing to do.”

In 2007, the Crete and Monmouth facilities of Farmland Foods wanted to find a way to use the money they were receiving from increased recycling of scrap metal and other materials in a meaningful way. Their waste minimalization teams wanted to share the monetary rewards of these recycling endeavors with the surrounding community, and with their employees.

As a result, a fund of approximately $10,000 was set up to give scholarships to the sons and daughters of Farmland employees. These scholarships were given to high school seniors with the hopes that they would display an interest in helping to preserve the environment after the completion of their post high school education. The scholarships encourage the graduates to consider the environment and how it could be affected by their future jobs, no matter which career path they choose.

Because of these efforts, the Crete facility received a President’s Environmental Excellence Award from Smithfield Foods in 2007, and the Monmouth facility received one in 2008. Since that time they continue to distribute the scholarships; each facility has now awarded almost 30 scholarships! All this was made possible by the increased recycling efforts of the waste minimalization teams at these facilities.

Just one more example of how better environmental stewardship can lead to other fantastic results!