How Communist China Captured Washington’s Pork Lobby – and Turned it Against American Farmers
As Congress considers the pork lobby’s number one priority in this upcoming Farm Bill, the so-called “Save Our Bacon Act” (SOB Act), lawmakers should ask one question: who does that lobby actually represent?
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You know Smithfield Foods, the seemingly all-American brand behind Nathan’s Famous hot dogs? Recent filings show the company is actually 86.9 percent Chinese-owned.
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.
Dozens of House Republicans have already seen through it, calling the provision sweeping federal overreach that would strip states of authority, override the choices of their own citizens, and help China finish the takeover it started when it bought Smithfield in 2013. To make matters worse, a found the SOB Act would erase virtually all state pre-harvest farming standards, including laws that protect livestock, and all of us, from diseases like avian flu and invasive pests like screwworms.
To understand why the NPPC would champion such a dangerous bill, look no further than its governing body. A Smithfield employee has held a seat on NPPC’s board every year since 2012. In six of those years, including 2026, China’s U.S. division has held two seats at once, something no other company has ever done. Smithfield employees have also served on the nominating committee that vets every candidate for that board. And under the NPPC’s own , its largest producer is almost certainly its largest funder.
Who stands behind Smithfield is no mystery either. As the Daily Caller reported, WH Group’s chairman and four top executives are Chinese Communist Party members, and at the company’s Chinese flagship, Party members make up 85% of senior executives. The chairman himself is a former People’s Liberation Army soldier who spent twenty years in China’s National People’s Congress.
The state-owned Bank of China financed Smithfield’s 2013 takeover with a $4 billion loan, and the acquiring company’s own president said the government backed the deal “with preferential policy, as well as investment.” This is the company that benefits if the SOB Act becomes law.
The family farmers the NPPC claims to speak for want no part of this. Independent hog farmers traveled to Washington last fall to oppose the bill their own lobby calls its top priority. “They’re saying that they represent us all, but they do not represent us at all,” Pennsylvania hog farmer Brent Hershey stated.
The same could be said for the lawmakers who do the NPPC and WH Group’s bidding, and they can’t claim ignorance. For years, Congress has held hearings on Chinese influence over American farmland, food processing, and supply chains. Members even created a select committee dedicated to confronting the Chinese Communist Party.
But one of this committee’s members, Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa, is a lead sponsor of the SOB Act and has accepted over $27,000 in campaign contributions from the NPPC and Smithfield. All the while, Hinson talks tough on China: “We must block the CCP from…exerting control over our food supply,” she warns, and “we can’t sit on our hands as the CCP works to infiltrate our agriculture industry.”
Imagine a Cold War committee created to take on the Soviet Union whose own members warned of communist infiltration by day and cashed checks from Moscow’s American subsidiary by night. Hinson says we can’t sit on our hands while the CCP infiltrates American agriculture, but hers are full of Smithfield’s checks.
Hinson should explain this hypocrisy to her voters, and so should Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, who have repeatedly postured about the threat Chinese control of the U.S. food supply poses while sponsoring the SOB Act and accepting over $25,000 each from the NPPC and WH Group’s U.S. branch.
Congress has a choice. It can reject the SOB Act and side with the farmers and voters it actually answers to, or it can hand the biggest prize in the Farm Bill to a lobby whose most powerful member answers to Beijing.
Before they call the roll, legislators should answer the question: when the “voice of America’s pork producers” speaks, is it in English or Mandarin?
Members of the editorial and news staff of the Daily Caller were not involved in the creation of this content.
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