Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

Pork Company Does Rosh Hashanah

It’s not just Jews who will avoid discussing business next month on Rosh Hashanah – this year, the country’s biggest pork producer will be doing the same.

Smithfield Foods Inc., the Virginia-based makers of more than 50 pork and turkey products, announced last week that it has rescheduled its quarterly conference call partly because of the holiday, moving the telephone earnings report forward by a day so as not to conflict with the Jewish New Year. The Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported August 16 that the company will conduct the quarterly conference call – usually held on Thursdays – on Wednesday, September 8, hours before the start of the holiday.

“With Labor Day on Monday and Rosh Hashanah on Thursday and Friday of that week, Wednesday worked best for this release from a scheduling standpoint,” a Smithfield spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail to the Norfolk-based newspaper.

The e-mail didn’t expand on the Jewish holiday’s role in the rescheduling of the call, but noted, “We always try to schedule the earnings releases when we think we will get the highest level of participation.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.