Smithfield Foods CEO Larry Pope to address U.S. lawmakers about merger with China's Shuanghui International. (Photo: Steve Helber, AP) Story Highlights Merger with Shuanghui International is largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm 
 
 Larry Pope tells U.S. lawmakers the deal will open Asian markets to Smithfield 
 
 Critics fear deal could impact U.S. food supply and safety 
 
 WASHINGTON — Congressional lawmakers grilled the top executive at pork giant Smithfield Foods Wednesday about how the proposed $4.7 billion purchase of the company by China's largest meat producer might affect the U.S. food supply and agricultural producers. 
 
 CEO Larry Pope told a packed Senate hearing his company remains committed to producing safe and plentiful food if the deal is approved. He underscored the benefits he said would come from the takeover by Shuanghui International Holdings, including jobs and higher pork exports. 
 
 "This is a wonderful opportunity for the U.S. to do what it does best: produce agriculture products and ship them around the world," Pope told the Senate Agriculture Committee. "This is an opportunity for U.S. pork producers to grow." 
 
 Pope said the merger would have "no noticeable impact on how we do business in America and around the world, except that we will do more of it." 
 
 But committee members from both parties appeared unconvinced. 
 
 APPROVAL NEEDED: Smithfield deal must get past secretive panel 
 
 CONCERNS: Smithfield workers wary over China deal 
 
 Lawmakers expressed concern the takeover would squeeze the U.S. pork supply by shipping more of the meat to China and leave the U.S. susceptible to food safety concerns that have plagued Chinese companies, including Shuanghui. 
 
 They also raised a host of other concerns, including what would happen to Smithfield's intellectual property and the impact of the deal on U.S. agriculture producers. 
 
 "In the short term, I know this deal looks good for our producers. This also needs to be a good deal in the long-term," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee. "One pork company alone might not be enough to affect our national security, but it's our job to be thinking about the big picture and the long-term for American food security and economic security." 
 
 Smithfield, founded in 1936 and based in Virginia, sells packaged products under its own name and other popular brands, including Farmland, Armour and Cook's. The company, the world's largest pork processor and hog producer, employs more than 46,000 people in 25 states and four countries. 
 
 Pope said the transaction would not lead to food imports from China. Instead, he said, it would open up the market for U.S. pork farmers by giving them more access to Shuanghui's large distribution system and millions of meat-hungry consumers in China, South Korea, Japan and other Asian countries. 
 
 Smithfield has stressed repeatedly that the merged company would keep its current management and facilities in place and maintain existing relationships with U.S. pork producers. Pope made those points again Wednesday. 
 
 The deal, which would be the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm, is expected to close later this year. Shareholders and regulators, including the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), which reviews such transactions for their impact on national security, must approve the merger. 
 
 Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and other lawmakers have called for the CFIUS review of the Smithfield deal to include the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration. Lawmakers met privately with CFIUS officials after Wednesday's hearing to ask questions about the Smithfield merger and the notoriously secretive review process. 
 
 The proposed takeover of Smithfield has stoked growing concern about an influx of foreign investment in the United States. Many expect cash-rich China to be an active player in the future, much to the dismay of Washington lawmakers reluctant to cede control of U.S.-owned businesses to the communist country. 
 
 "I think it is reasonable for you to expect a wave of Chinese investments into our food and agriculture industry, and this potential purchase is not a one-off," said Daniel Slane, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a government agency that monitors trade and economic relationships between the two countries. "Today, it's Smithfield, but tomorrow, it could be Consolidated Grain, ConAgra or Tyson Foods." 
 
 Slane said Shuanghui likely views the deal as a way to help minimize the risk of volatile commodity prices and to obtain Smithfield's valuable intellectual knowledge of meat processing and animal genetics. 
 
 "This is really all about control," he said. "The Chinese could easily go out and buy pork." 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/12meRHl ||||| A proposed acquisition of Smithfield Foods would send pork to China and leave more pig feces in the U.S., potentially increasing the risk of superbug infections and other diseases 
 
 We put up with a lot of crap—literally. 
 
 Last year, at least 4.7 billion gallons of hog manure in the U.S. came from one company, Smithfield foods, the nation's leading pork producer. The feces load will rise if U.S. regulators green-light a proposed merger that would bring the firm under the auspices of a China-based company. That increase could also promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and increase health risks for hog farm workers and the communities living around them. 
 
 Under a proposed multibillion-dollar deal, Hong Kong–based Shuanghui International Holdings would buy Virginia-based Smithfield Foods. The stated purpose of the merger, the companies say, is to efficiently increase pork production. If the deal goes as planned, Smithfield will ultimately export more meat to China, where the appetite for pork continues to climb upward even as Americans buy less of it. But with that expected production boost comes an uptick in hog feces left in the U.S.—and subsequent health and environmental risks. 
 
 The impacts of industrial-scale hog production like Smithfield’s have played out in the courts and medical journals for decades—largely from the way the firms handle the waste. The majority of hog feces from Smithfield sits in earthen lagoons where it naturally ages for six to 12 months before the slurry is then sprayed on agricultural fields as fertilizer. 
 
 Studies on communities living around such farms have indicated individuals exposed to the odors and emissions from around the lagoons have more respiratory complaints and increased asthma symptoms. Moreover, when hogs are raised in crowded environments in industrial-scale farms they require greater quantities of antibiotics (pdf) to promote growth and compensate for unsanitary conditions. That antibiotic use is linked with increased antibiotic resistance in humans. 
 
 Indeed, researchers in particular worry that antibiotic-laden hog manure can seep into the water and air as well as bodies of people surrounding such farms, with subtle implications both for health and for the spread of antibiotic resistance. In one study high concentrations of antibiotic and multidrug-resistant bacteria were detected inside and downwind of an industrial-size swine production facility, but not upwind. Other work linked antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in groundwater and private drinking wells to swine facilities located upstream. This month more than 580 residents of eastern North Carolina—the state with the most Smithfield hogs—filed complaints against the company, charging that the pollution from that hog production deprives them of the use and enjoyment of their property. 
 
 Smithfield, which operates across 12 states, brought 15.8 million hogs to market in fiscal 2012—and each hog, according to the company, produced an average of 1,100 to 1,300 liters of manure during its lifetime (including the water used to push the pig feces into pits below their pens). Smithfield says there will be no changes to the company’s production practices or its sustainability plan. “It will be the same old Smithfield—only better,” Larry Pope, company president and chief executive officer, told the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry on July 10. “Without this opportunity to grow outside of the United States there is no opportunity for U.S. pork producers to expand.” 
 
 With the deal, Shuanghui is getting something more important than more meat, charges Usha Haley, professor of management and expert on emerging markets at West Virginia University. The company would also be acquiring the clout of Smithfield’s name and knowledge of U.S. production practices and technology, she says. The merger would then help fuel China’s shift toward even more hog farms that adopt Smithfield’s vertically integrated processes—namely, industrial-size farms that raise pigs in close quarters and dispose of their waste through the lagoon-and-spray method, thereby threatening to reproduce the same health and antibiotic-resistance issues in China.
– If regulators approve the sale of Smithfield Foods to a Chinese company, the US will soon be producing more pigs to feed China's growing appetite for all things porcine. And more pigs will produce more poop. Smithfield—America's (and the world's) largest producer of pork—already produced some 4.7 billion gallons of hog manure just last year. Adding even more to the pile could result in a slurry of health and environmental risks, reports Scientific American. The feces from Smithfield's pigs sits in a lagoon for six to 12 months before being turned into fertilizer. Emissions from the lagoons have increased respiratory problems for people living nearby. And the more crowded the pigs' living conditions get, the more antibiotics they need to stay disease-free. Researchers are worried that antibiotic-laced poop could seep into the air and water supplies, increasing drug resistance in nearby communities. Earlier this week, Smithfield's CEO stressed to Congress that the deal wouldn't affect food safety or standards. Not all were convinced, reports USA Today, while others remain worried about how it will affect Smithfield's valuable intellectual property. "They will take our technology and they will integrate it into China," says a commissioner with the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, per the National Journal. "Once they digest all of this and they get the their industry up, they'll start to try to export their pork to us."