Canada resumes receiving pork from Smithfield Foods

Mar 17, 2025
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

The temporary suspension was related to offal shipments

Canada is once again accepting pork shipments from Smithfield Foods’ processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C.

Canada suspended imports last week “following an issue with a limited number of certain offal shipments,” Smithfield said in a March 14 statement. “We are grateful to the USDA and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) for a quick resolution of this matter.”

Neither the USDA or CFIA provided any clarification online about what actually caused the suspension.

But the USDA identified that under Canadian policy, “three noncompliance issues within six months” results in a suspension, Reuters reported.

Smithfield’s facility in North Carolina is the world’s largest processing plant.

The plant has the capacity to process about 32,000 hogs each day.

The CFIA also has a new minister responsible for its work.

As the newly appointed minister of health, Kamal Khera assumes responsibility for the CFIA.

She served as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of health from 2015 to 2017.

From 2021 to 2023 the MP for Brampton West was the minister of seniors, and from 2023 to 2025 was the minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities.

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