the United States. By the 1980s, the Dubuque plant began to decline. In 1980 the Dubuque Packing Company announced that they lost $9.9 million at its Dubuque facility. They asked the union for concessions, based on claims of market changes, high wages, and equipment problems. The company also shut down parts of the plant. By 1981 nearly 1,400 were unemployed when the hog kill was shut down. Then in 1982 company management announced that the plant would close on October 16, 1982, which would put 1,200 people out of work and bring the unemployment rate up to 17.2 percent. This was despite a 15.8 percent cut in pay and benefits that union workers had taken, and a reduction in taxes by the city. In the fall of 1982, the President and Chairman of Dubuque Packing Company Charles E. Stoltz sold the packing plant and its fleur-de-lis trademark to a group which included Robert H. Wahlert. The packing plant began operations as FDL Foods, Inc. The Dubuque Packing Company moved its headquarters to the Dubuque Building, where it continued to bargain with the union over pension and insurance benefits. In 1985 the headquarters was moved to Omaha, Nebraska to be more centrally located to its other plants, which were processing primarily beef at that time. The company again flourished and was later sold in a leveraged buyout to BeefAmerica, a firm controlled by Eli Jacobs. Its gelatin operations were sold to the French company Sanofi. BeefAmerica went out of business in 1998 following a recall and a strike. Current status The packing plant in Dubuque operated under the FDL Foods Inc. name until September 1995 when the plant again closed, this time due to the loss of the sole contract with Hormel (as reported to workers by management in July 1995). The plant was eventually sold to Farmland Foods, who continued to operate the plant until 2001. Smithfield Foods purchased the plant with the stated intention of refurbishing and reopening the plant. However once Smithfield purchased the plant they decided not to proceed with either remodeling or reopening the plant. This led to the belief that Smithfield only purchased the plant to remove competition from the market. For the next four years, the former Dubuque Packing Company plant sat empty. From time to time Dubuque police used the plant for training purposes, but otherwise no activity took place there. Many in