Accused of Abusing Workers, Animals and Watersheds, ‘Teflon’ Tyson Eyes China
No one has ever accused Tyson Foods of being green.
Even as the Springdale, AR-based meat giant’s probation ends for 20 federal violations of the Clean Water Act at its Sedalia, MO chicken plant in 2003–it paid a $7.7 million fine–it is back in court.
In an unfolding trial in Tulsa, OK, Tyson is accused by the state of Oklahoma, along with Cargill Inc. and a dozen other poultry companies, of violating state and federal laws limiting the disposal of animal waste in the Illinois River watershed.
Tyson and the other accused companies treat Oklahoma’s rivers, “like open sewers,” says State Attorney General Drew Edmondson, dumping into the watershed in one year the amount of phosphorous that would be generated by 10.7 million people.
But Tyson has more troubles than being on the wrong side of the Clean Water Act.
In July, it was fined $339,500 by the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration for “serious, willful, repeat and other-than-serious violations of safety and health standards” at its Noel, MO plant.
In January, it settled a financial wrongdoing suit brought by Tyson shareholders and Amalgamated Bank that charged it with spring-loading options–a maneuver similar to backdating–for $4.5 million.
And then there’s production.
Tyson had planned to capitalize on the $13 billion natural foods market, oxymoron aside, by marketing chicken “raised without antibiotics” and even launched its web site and PR machinery.
But the Department of Agriculture ruled the ionophores Tyson uses in chicken production are antibiotics over Tyson protests that ionophores don’t cause human antibiotic resistance and the venture went nowhere.
This year it announced the closure of a 400-person Wilkesboro, NC chicken plant–”Growing consumer demand for ready-to-eat foods” has edged out “refrigerated, oven roasted chicken,” it says–and the end of slaughter operations at its 1,700-person Emporia, KS beef plant. Two years ago it shuttered slaughter plants in Boise, ID, and West Point, NE.
Of course it is no secret that it’s hard to find legal workers for meat plant jobs.
But in 2001 a federal grand jury charged Tyson with actually operating an elaborate illegal worker smuggling scheme–paying undercover agents for delivery of workers to Tyson plants across the country and providing them with fake Social Security and other identification cards. Tyson even paid smugglers who helping aliens across the Rio Grande with corporate checks according to the 57 page indictment.
But Tyson was found not guilty.
Nor did charges brought by employees Birda Trollinger, Robert Martinez, Tabetha Edding and Doris Jewell that Tyson violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by knowingly hiring illegal immigrants who were willing to work for wages below those acceptable to Americans stick the following year.
“This is a company with a bad history,” the Rev. Jim Lewis, an Episcopal minister in Arkansas, told the New York Times. “They cheat these workers out of pay and benefits, and then try to keep them quiet by threatening to send them back to Mexico.”
Of course there’s something worse than illegal employees: undercover ones.
In December 2004 and February 2005, an undercover investigator with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) gained employment at Tyson’s Heflin, AL chicken plant and videotaped workers ripping off chickens’ heads manually, malfunctioning throat-cutting machines which mutilated birds and a plant manager saying it was acceptable if up to 40 birds per shift were scalded alive.
Two years later undercover employees at Tyson’s Cumming, GA and Union City, TN plants documented additional atrocities and workers urinating in the live-hang area.
Tyson responded by firing several workers at the Cumming and Union City plants–it wouldn’t say how many or if any were managers–and disciplining and retraining others in animal welfare.
But the 2003 disclosures of its own employee, Virgil Butler, who worked at its Grannis, AK plant for five years suggest a pattern of abuse. Butler described birds scalded alive, left to freeze to death and exploded with dry ice by employees for their amusement.
Some say Tyson’s “Teflon” conviction history bespeaks friends in high places.
Who can forget the charges that it bribed agriculture secretary Mike Espy with gifts to influence legislation in 1997 leading to his disgraced resignation? Tyson paid $6 million to settle the accusations but the two convicted Tyson executives facing prison time were pardoned by Clinton.
But Tyson officials see it differently.
“If we’ve got all this political power, how come the government keeps doing this to us?” asked former chief marketing officer Bob Corscadden.
Now Tyson is capitalizing on unmet demand for chicken in China by opening Jiangsu Tyson Foods in Haiman City, near Shanghai, which will produce 400,000 birds a week at first with plans to increase production to 1 million birds a week.
Richard Bond, Tyson’s president and chief executive says the company intends to become, “the first producer to deliver brand name, high quality fresh chicken to consumers in the eastern China market.”
Nor does it expect regulatory problems.
Martha Rosenberg is a cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable in Evanston, Illinois.
Simple solution…never buy Tyson food, it’s garbage anyway.
tyson garbage not for me,ever. Tony
The meat industry is rotten.
Been vegan for 20 years–dont need to eat something that uses scraped up chicken manure re fed to chickens.
No wonder so many pro meat arguments are full of sh*t.
I moved to Arkansas two years ago — I live 5 blocks from a Tyson slaughterhouse — and I can tell you that all of the reported abuses to humans and animals are true and occur on a daily basis throughout their organization. I work with a number of Salvadoran, Mexican, and Guatemalan families who are employed by Tyson, and they tell horror story after horror story about corporate malfeasance, the neglect and illegal activity of management, and the scandalous behavior of fellow workers. Top to bottom, the industry is a breeding ground for gross injustice and systemic violence — I agree with kelmer, and being vegan has never been so easy and yet so difficult.
By the way, Virgil Butler is from AR (Arkansas), not AK (Alaska). He is a local hero to many.
Virgil Butler is indeed a hero, and much missed. Laura will be pleased to know people think about him in the context of protecting animals.
riverman101- That was one of the strangest posts I’ve ever seen. Congrats for making no sense whatsoever yet managing to sound incredibly sexist!
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Yet another article pointing out the problems with the industrial meat system. Just say NO to industrial meat! If you can’t or won’t go veg, find someone you trust to raise and slaughter food animals humanely, or better yet raise and kill (or hunt) your own!
stanfabio -
The meat industry is also a very well-funded lobby with powerful allies in gub’ment.
Stop eating this crap and we’ll clean up the environment as well as live healthier lives … not to mention we’ll at least stop spilling some blood.
River…, It’s past time for your meds, love.
Same here, “I agree with kelmer, and being vegan has never been so easy and yet so difficult.”
You know, if we did the sensible thing and returned to a local economy and family farms for our food, these kinds of atrocities would be mostly a thing of the past. But I guess $$$ is far more important than a safe, clean, healthy and humane food supply….
“Richard Bond, Tyson’s president and chief executive says the company intends to become, ‘the first producer to deliver brand name, high quality fresh chicken to consumers in the eastern China market.’”
The Chinese already know how to get high quality, fresh chicken (the kind that isn’t pumped up to make it meatier) - and without the brand name.
There are reports that Tyson was big into coke. Hence, the connect with the Clintons and Mena.
as has been pointed out, the easiest way to trim Tyson’s chicken wings is to stop buying their (or any other tainted or cruel food processor’s) products.
They derive their power from our collective buyinhg decisions–it’s that simple. Vote with every penny you spend for businesses that do right. It is past time we commence to democratize poverty.
As soon as we realize that our means to food is controlled - and it doesn’t matter by who, even if Tyson was made up of great, earth friendly tree-huggers it would still be unacceptable - we can break ourselves free of these chains, and things like this will not happen anymore.
http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com
The only way we can change this is through a wide-spread, well-publicized boycott of all Tyson products. Non-employees should picket area Tysons, whether in conjunction with a Tysons’ workers’ strike or as citizens outraged by the practices of this uber-corp. Unless the public is willing to hit Tyson where it hurts (profits), nothing will change. Such (publicized) boycotting by consumers can be more powerful than strikes.