Premium Standard Farms LLC, along with legal counsel for plaintiffs in longstanding Missouri nuisance litigation, have announced an agreement has been reached to settle nearly 300 individual claims regarding PSF hog operations in Missouri.



Some claims against PSF, which was acquired by Smithfield Foods, Inc. in 2007, have been pending for over a decade. Terms of the agreement are confidential.
“This agreement effectively brings the Missouri nuisance litigation to a close and allows PSF to focus its entire efforts on what it does best: providing families with wholesome, nutritious food and creating jobs in northern Missouri,” said Jean Paul Bradshaw, co-counsel for PSF.
“The settlement announced today represents the culmination of a long battle,” said Stephen A. Weiss, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “After four grueling trials over the past six years alone, we were prepared to litigate each claim, but this agreement hammered out between the parties is a fair and just resolution of what not long ago seemed to be an irresolvable dispute.”
Weiss’s co-lead counsel, Charles F. Speer, said that a major factor in his clients’ willingness to settle the claims was PSF’s implementation of additional odor control systems in many of their company farms, including barn scrapers, pursuant to Consent Judgments entered into with the Missouri Attorney General in 2010.