In 2013, CCP owned enterprise named Shuanghui Group, WH Group purchased Smithfield Foods(SF) for $4.72 billion. It was the largest Chinese Communist company acquisition of an American company as the acquisition is including 146,000 acres of land - One of the largest overseas owners of American farmland.
On August 3, 2018, a federal jury awarded six North Carolina residents $470 million in damages against Murphy-Brown LLC which is a subsidiary of SF. The verdict included $75 million each in punitive damages, plus $3–5 million in compensatory damages for loss of enjoyment in their properties.
In 2022, Smithfield Foods will pay restaurants and caterers $42 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the giant meat producer of conspiring to inflate pork prices!
SF works with Hormel, Tyson Foods, Seaboard Foods and Triumph Foods, and the Agri Stats database company to control the pork price and control their supplies. They use the shared confidential information that includes price, capacity and demand so they can have a non competitive unified price in American market. It makes the market less competitive!
As a result, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture also created a website earlier this year to make it easier for farmers and ranchers to report any concerns about anticompetitive behavior in the industry.