Plants work to minimize raids' costs
US - Swift & Co. faced millions of dollars in lost revenues when federal investigators shuttered the Greeley-based company's slaughterhouses nationwide following a raid Tuesday.But the loses Tuesday were minimized to only "several millions of dollars," one company executive said.
Swift, one of the nation's largest meat producers, resumed work at all its plants five hours after agents arrived in a simultaneous raid to ferret illegal immigrants allegedly working under stolen identities.
"It's still a significant impact to us," Swift president and chief executive Sam Rovit said. "In the short term the costs are in the several millions of dollars, but we can't say what the full impact will be until the dust settles. We are able to meet most of our customer commitments."
Those commitments include millions of dollars in government meat contracts, including the Defense Commissary Agency, which operates 182 military grocery stores in the country. Current numbers were not available, but the company received $44.6 million in defense contracts from 2001 to 2005.
Source: Denver Post.com