At chain speeds that can reach 300 head of cattle an hour and 18,000 hogs and pigs a day, any production disruption at the company's four beef and two pork plants can quickly become a costly matter.

But the loses Tuesday were minimized to only "several millions of dollars," one company executive said.

Swift, one of the nation's largest meat producers, resumed work at all its plants five hours after agents arrived in a simultaneous raid to ferret illegal immigrants allegedly working under stolen identities.

"It's still a significant impact to us," Swift president and chief executive Sam Rovit said. "In the short term the costs are in the several millions of dollars, but we can't say what the full impact will be until the dust settles. We are able to meet most of our customer commitments."

Those commitments include millions of dollars in government meat contracts, including the Defense Commissary Agency, which operates 182 military grocery stores in the country. Current numbers were not available, but the company received $44.6 million in defense contracts from 2001 to 2005.

Source: Denver Post.com