|
 The Brazilian group JBS, which is the leading beef exporter of Latinamerica announced the purchase of Swift & Co., the third largest fresh meat (beef and pork) packer in the United States, thus becoming the world's leading meat packer.
The deal involves US$ 225 million cash and taking on Swift's US$ 1.2 billion debt and should be completed by July following approval from local authorities.
The sale comes in the wake of tough times for Swift, which has been owned by a Dallas private equity firm, HM Capital Partners, since 2002 when ConAgra Foods sold it. A federal immigration raid last December also resulted in 1,300 workers being arrested at Swift plants, including about 200 at the Worthington, Minnesota, plant. Swift announced after that it might sell out.
"The acquisition reflects the constant expansion policy of JBS", said the company's CEO Joesley Mendonca Batista who added that the expansion strategy was to make JBS a global company and with Swift "we'll reach the Asia-Pacific markets".
JBS has plants in Brazil, Argentina and Australia and the Swift acquisition makes it Brazil's biggest food company.
In Argentina JBS has five plants in three different provinces and in September 2005 purchased the Swift abattoir (which no longer belonged to the US corporation) for US$ 200 million.
JBS participation in the Argentine livestock purchasing market is estimated above 9%.
Quickfood Argentina's CEO Miguel Gorelick described the takeover as "positive for Mercosur"
"This means the globalization of the meat industry, which contrary to the rest of the food industry had no global companies, with the European and US corporations focused on their consumer markets," added Gorelick.
"The operation could in the mid term help Argentine and Brazilian beef access to the US market."
"A major independent meat company owned by a large international conglomerate is not unusual in our business. It's a continuation of an ongoing trend," said Jeremy Russell, director of communications and government relations for the United States National Meat Association.
However in some US cattle ranching states such as South Dakota, the Congressional delegation Senators Tim Johnson and John Thune and Republican Stephanie Herseth Sandlin called for greater antitrust protection for livestock producers.
"As a longtime supporter of country-of-origin labeling, and having expressed deep concern over the consolidation in agricultural businesses, I find this development especially troubling," said Senator Thune of the merger.
"American consumers deserve to know where their food is produced, and U.S. farmers deserve a fair price for their livestock. This kind of deal accomplished neither of those standards," he insisted.
Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Soon they will be replaced by 2600 Illegal Brazilian Workers !