Americans don’t eat enough bacon. The pork king has a plan.

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Shane Smith has helped make the country’s largest pork producer into a grunting, rooting, squealing marvel of efficiency. The chief executive of Smithfield Foods took the company public this past week and is ready to invest in it to confront his biggest challenge: getting us to eat more pork.

He has a contingency plan to get our pets to eat pork, too. In a more than $50 billion pork industry that produces far more bacon, chops and hams than Americans will eat in a year, Smithfield needs to push U.S. buyers to fill up their bellies with pork, but it also needs markets around the world to continue to consume what its domestic diners don’t eat—heads, feet and other pig byproducts.

The Smithfield IPO raised roughly $500 million on the Nasdaq Stock Market and its owner, China’s WH Group takes half of that and retains its majority stake. Smith plans to use the funds to build out Smithfield’s packaged-meats business and sell more bacon, deli ham and hot dogs. He also plans to automate and invest in its plants scattered across the U.S.

Shane Smith and his father having a pork pickin. Smith, 51, took over as CEO in 2021 after nearly two decades rising through the company’s ranks. Raised on a farm in Wayne County, N.C., Smith grew up tending crops and helping his father, a logger.

Now, he lives with his wife near Smithfield, Va., where the company is located. He has four children and a granddaughter. “I was either topping trees in the summertime or pushing pigs or picking corn," Smith said.

He studied accounting at Mt. Olive College in eastern North Carolina, but wound up back in agriculture, joining Smithfield in 2003 as a financial analyst. The future CEO was analytical but inquisitive about