The meatpacking company JBS recently suffered a cyberattack that stopped production. A South Dakota hog producer says it also put personal information at risk.
Local meat producers bring papers with barcodes to processing plants. The barcodes relay information about the farm where the animals came from. Sensitive information is passed around digitally every time a barcode is scanned.
Jim Petrick is a hog producer from Gayville. He worries the industry is vulnerable to further cyberattacks.
“I mean obviously JBS is a very large processor, but I mean if this happened to more than one meat processor at a time it would really mess things up.”
JBS is the biggest meatpacking company in the world. Its beef and pork products sell under the Swift label and other brand names.