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Impact Of Immigration Raids On Pork Industry Short Lived, Analysts Say

A panel of pork industry analysts said that while Swift & Co. was hurt by the immigration raids conducted by Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division in early December, the impact on the pork industry as a whole was extremely short-lived. “It took the industry less than a week to recover“ and return to pre-raid production levels, said Ron Plain, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri.

One week after the raid, production had returned to 424,000 hogs slaughtered on a daily basis, and some plants ran Saturday shifts to even out production.

Swift reports that while production is still down and will remain so for the short-term, the company is back to operating the same shifts it did before the raid.

By Pete Hisey on Friday, December 29, 2006