Smithfield Farms, the world’s largest pork producer, is launching a bioscience arm to ramp up company sales of pig parts for medical procedures. The $14-billion subsidiary of China’s WH Group hopes to one day offer pig organs for human transplants.
“Smithfield already harvests materials for medical use from the 16 million hogs it slaughters each year,” says Reuters. “The company owns more than 51 percent of its farms and hopes to sell directly to researchers and health-care companies, which now typically buy from third parties.”
With huge demand for organs — on average, 22 people die every day waiting for a transplant, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing — Smithfield sees the potential for huge profits.
“Our bread and butter has always been the bacon, sausage, fresh pork — very much a food-focused operation,” said Courtney Stanton, vice president of Smithfield’s new bioscience unit. “We want to signal to the medical device and science communities that this is an area we’re focused on — that we’re not strictly packers,” she said.
Reuters reported that Smithfield “has joined a public-private tissue engineering consortium funded by an $80 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.”