By Patrick Thomas

Before Smithfield Foods slaughtered more hogs than anyone else in America, it was a middling regional pork company in southern Virginia.

That was until Joe Luter III, son of the founder of Smithfield, saved the company from near-bankruptcy in 1975 and built it into a meatpacking powerhouse that changed the way pork is produced in the U.S.

Luter, who died Aug. 28 at the age of 86, was among the titans of the meat industry who built their companies into global powers from nothing, like Don Tyson, Frank Perdue and Bob Peterson. Smithfield now generates about $15 billion in annual sales. Luter was a staunch defender of the meat business, known for speaking his mind to politicians, activists and other business leaders.

A no-nonsense executive, Luter thought most meetings were a waste of time, becoming restless after 20 minutes. He would cut a meeting short by saying in his southern Virginia drawl, "What's the bottom line?" says his son, Joe Luter IV, who worked at Smithfield for a time.

He also had a penchant for dealmaking. His son recalls how his father reveled in beating out agriculture giant Cargill in a more than $360 million bidding war for the pork business of Farmland Industries in 2003. "He loved negotiation, and he loved the game, and he won," he said.

Started on the line

Luter got his start in the pork business during the summers between semesters at Wake Forest University. He worked stints on the processing line -- slaughtering hogs, slicing bacon and working at the loading dock at his family's company. After his father died, Luter became president of his family's company in 1966 at the age of 26.

He sold the company and bought a ski resort in Virginia, but returned to Smithfield in 1975 when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1981, he bought the company's chief pork-processing rival in southern Virginia, Gwaltney. It was the first deal he did and doubled the size of the company overnight.

Dozens of deals followed. Luter went on an acquisition spree in the 1980s and 1990s, buying several smaller, struggling pork companies, including John Morrell and Patrick Cudahay.

He also borrowed a strategy from the chicken industry, developing and buying up hog farms so that Smithfield could control each stage of pork production. He purchased a specific breed of low-fat British hogs to make pork leaner in the U.S., and the pigs were flown over to Smithfield on a Boeing 747.

The strategy set the standard for the modern pork industry. By raising hogs and slaughtering them, companies could hedge against the boom or bust commodity meat cycles. It also gave them more control over the quality and characteristics of the hogs moving through Luter's slaughter plants.

In the 1990s, he built the world's largest hog slaughter plant in Tar Heel, N.C., capable of processing roughly 35,000 hogs a day as a destination for his growing hog supply.

Former Smithfield executives say he ran Smithfield in the mold of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, with each brand running its own business independently -- a model the company would later phase out.

Selling beef

Luter also lost some fights. He was outbid by meatpacking newcomers JBS in the early 2000s for Swift Beef, which later prompted him to sell off Smithfield's beef assets after his defeat. Tyson Foods outbid him for IBP in 2001 for $3.2 billion. The deal would have made Smithfield the nation's biggest beef processor.

When Tyson later tried to back out of the deal (a judge wouldn't allow it), Luter ran a full-page newspaper ad to poke fun at his rival, saying "This pig can fly!" in which a cartoon pig punts a bug-eyed chicken into the air.

Activists and environmental groups protesting Smithfield and the pork industry often gave him nicknames in the media, such as "Boss Hog" and "Luter the Polluter."

The criticisms unfazed him. Luter's son says his dad often said that if he never made any enemies, it means he never did a "damn thing" with his life. He dismissed critics of the company's growing hog farms as whiners, and said animal-rights activists wanted to impose a vegetarian society on the U.S. "Most vegetarians I know are neurotic," he told The Wall Street Journal in a 2001 interview.

"Joe was larger than life," said Paul Fribourg, CEO of agriculture investment firm Continental Grain, and a former Smithfield board member. "He not only built the largest and best pork company in the U.S., but he transformed the industry."

In the early 2000s, Luter's brother-in-law and agriculture industry executive, Eric Frywald, introduced Luter to Wan Long, chairman of China's Shuanghui International, now named WH Group. A few years later, Luter sold Smithfield to WH Group for $4.7 billion -- at the time the biggest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company.

The deal has since made Smithfield a popular target for politicians upset about Chinese ownership of a big American brand. Luter's son said his father's adversarial relationships with some Midwestern lawmakers over the years probably compounded the animosity. Luter also grew concerned about the business after a period of frequent CEO changes, and as WH Group shares traded in Hong Kong languished, his son said.

That changed in January, when WH Group relisted its stock in the U.S. -- though WH Group still has a nearly 90% stake in Smithfield, his son said.

"He was happy to see the U.S. company relisted," Luter IV said. "They're bringing jobs back to Virginia. I know he's very pleased with that."

Write to Patrick Thomas at patrick.thomas@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 12, 2025 13:56 ET (17:56 GMT)

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