Earlier on, Iowa's Democrate senator Tom Harkin, also expressed his worries about the announced
merger. His worry is also that the deal violates anit-trust laws.
In a letter to the Justice
Department's antitrust division, Grassley
said the merger would hurt independent farmers by reducing the number of places
they can sell their pigs. "I have strong reservations about this proposal and
the continued trend in concentration in the pork industry," he wrote.
Smithfield will be paying approximately
$810 million for the proposed PSF takeover, announced on Monday. The merger brings
Smithfield Foods, the nation's largest pork processor and marketer and hog
producer, together with the second-largest pork producer and the sixth-largest
pork processor in the US.
Grassley added, "This merger would allow Smithfield/PSF to control over 1.2
million breeding animals," calling it 'alarming' to see that Smithfield is
intending "to purchase its competitors to assert its dominance in the pork
industry."
Criticism is not only confined to the state of Iowa. Missouri governour Matt Blunt sent a letter to US
attorney general Alberto Gonzalez asking for an anti-trust investigation as
well.
In a story published by the Des Moines Register, Dennis Treacy, Smithfield's
vice-president of environmental, community and government affairs, said
anti-trust issues were considered before the companies began
negotiating.
