Farms.com Home   Ag Industry News

Canada resumes receiving pork from Smithfield Foods

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.


Trending Video

Swine Leaders Live: Dr. Scott Stehlik on Leadership, Innovation & What’s Next in Pork Production

Video: Swine Leaders Live: Dr. Scott Stehlik on Leadership, Innovation & What’s Next in Pork Production

Swine Leaders Live is where pork industry leaders go beyond headlines and job titles. Each episode starts with a candid Host Chat — a quick exchange on what’s catching attention in the industry right now — before diving into a deeper conversation on leadership, operations, and the future of pork production.

In this episode, host Jim Eadie is joined by Dr. Scott Stehlik, Vice President of Support Operations at Iowa Select Farms. Together they explore the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the industry, Scott’s leadership philosophy, his approach to building strong teams, and the trends that will reshape swine production in the next 3–5 years.