Luter and his son started curing Smithfield hams and selling them to small stores located nearby.
[3] Smithfield Packing opened a large facility in Tar Heel, North Carolina in 1992.
The company offered thousands of workers in impoverished Bladen County hourly pay double the federal minimum wage.
[2] In November 2012, Smithfield Packing began the process of shutting down a plant in Portsmouth, Virginia that made hot dogs and deli meats and moving it to Kinston, North Carolina.
[5] In March 2013, Smithfield Packing announced the closure of a bone-in ham plant located in Landover, Maryland.