Forum

𝐔𝐒𝐃𝐀 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐘: 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐀 𝐎𝐖𝐍𝐒 𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀'𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐊 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐀𝐍𝐘 — 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐓𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐍

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins just said out loud what should terrify anyone who thinks about where their food… pic.twitter.com/3wTw02IcbP

— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) July 22, 2026

Smithfield’s majority owner is WH Group, a conglomerate linked to the Chinese Communist Party that is the world’s largest pork producer and that controls over a quarter of America’s pork industry. On WH Group’s behalf, Smithfield helps govern and bankroll the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), Washington’s powerful pork lobby. Although the Pork Council claims to be the voice of American farmers, it is China’s WH Group that has the most to gain from the lobby’s signature bill. The measure would nullify state laws setting minimum standards for how farm animals are raised, most notably banning “gestation crates,” metal cages barely larger than a pig’s body in which a mother pig cannot turn around for nearly her entire life. Thousands of small- and mid-size American farmers have invested to meet these standards because they offer a rare lifeline in today’s consolidated industry. Without them, the critical market these producers have carved out will collapse. That’s exactly what China and its Washington lobby want, and the motivation is right out in the open. The Communist Party’s own China Weekly celebrated the SOB Act as a measure that “will significantly increase China’s share of the U.S. pork market.” The same article complained that U.S. state laws “tend to favor smaller farms in the United States and disadvantage multinational foreign-funded enterprises, weakening the ability of Chinese pork enterprises to operate efficiently.” In other words, the Communist Party’s own press says this bill will take market share from American family farms and hand it to Chinese companies.