It was on the front page of the Marin Independent Journal, of all places, that I spotted the article lamenting that 1,800 workers are about to lose their jobs because Smithfield Foods is closing a mammoth pork processing plant in Southern California. Oh, no, I thought, not the Farmer John piggies!
Sure enough, the Virginia-based Smithfield company is about to walk away from a 426,000-square-foot pork factory, just four miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.…