January 2, 2007

Little impact of immigration raids on pork industry, say analysis

A panel of pork industry analysts said that while US-based Swift & Co was hurt by the immigration raids conducted by Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division in early December, the impact on the pork industry as a whole was short-lived.

The raids were conducted following reports of illegal migrants working at its meat-processing plants.

However, it took the industry less than a week to recover and return to pre-raid production levels, according to Ron Plain, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri.

One week after the raid, production had returned to 424,000 hogs slaughtered on a daily basis.

While the raids might have affected production for a short while, the company is back to operating the same shifts it did before the raid.