Is it any surprise that a company that bribes federal officials and regulators, pollutes public waterways, mistreats animals and sells contaminated products would subject workers to a viral outbreak?
Photograph Source:
Animal Freedom – CC BY 2.0
Even though 1,000 workers at Tyson’s slaughterhouse in Waterloo, IA have
tested positive for the coronavirus, it has reopened. Tyson has said last
week it would begin slaughtering pigs.
The company promised that workers would receive daily screenings and access
to nurse practitioners but many who can transmit the coronavirus are
asymptomatic. At two other Tyson Iowa plants, 956 workers have tested
positive. Meanwhile, “Millions of animals– chickens, pigs and cattle– will
be depopulated because of the closure of our processing facilities, Tyson
admits.
This is far from the first time Tyson, the world’s second largest chicken,
beef, and pork producer, has been in the news with food production scandals.
Tyson had sordid food production history before the coronavirus. Here is its
rap sheet.
* In June of 2019, 36,420 pounds of Tyson chicken nuggets were recalled due
to rubber contamination.
*In March of 2019, Tyson recalled 12 million pounds of ready-to-eat Tyson
chicken strip products for possible metal contamination.
* In 2008, Tyson was caught injecting eggs with the dangerous antibiotic
gentamicin, linked to serious side effects. The previous year the government
disallowed the Tyson slogan “Raised Without Antibiotics,” because the
ionophores it adds to poultry feed are antibiotics.
* In 2004, an internal Tyson memo revealed that the wives of two
veterinarians stationed at Tyson plants in Mexico had been receiving about
$2,700 a month “for years,” reported the New York Times. When Tyson
executives discovered the bribes, the payments were simply switched to the
veterinarians themselves.
Doctors will submit one invoice which will include the special payments
formally [formerly?] being made to their spouses along with there [sic]
normal consulting services fee,” said a Tyson’s audit department memo. No
one was charged in the scandal and Greg Lee, Tyson’s chief administrative
officer who received the e-mail about the veterinarians, received $1 million
and a $3.6 million consulting contract when he retired.
* In 2003, Tyson pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act with
effluvia from its Sedalia, MO, facility and agreed to pay $7.5 million. But
before its probation ended, Tyson was charged by the state of Oklahoma with
polluting the Illinois River watershed. Poultry polluters eject as much
phosphorous into the watershed as a city of ten million people, said State
Attorney General Drew Edmondson after bringing the changes. Phosphorus
causes overgrowth of algae and other aquatic plants which chokes off oxygen
vital to other marine life, especially animals.
*In 2003, Virgil Butler, a worker at Tyson’s Grannis, AR, chicken
slaughterhouse revealed how birds regularly miss the blade intended to kill
them and are scalded alive in the defeathering tank. “When this happens, the
chickens flop, scream, kick, and their eyeballs pop out of their heads,”
wrote Butler in a sworn affidavit. “Then, they often come out the other end
with broken bones and disfigured and missing body parts because they’ve
struggled so much in the tank.”
Such birds are so common that they’re called “red birds” in the industry and
account for two percent of US chickens according to the National Chicken
Council
* In 2001, Tyson was served with a federal indictment charging that the
company paid smugglers to transport illegal workers from Mexico across the
Rio Grande, after which they were supplied with phony social security cards
and brazenly paid with corporate checks. “This is a company with a bad
history,” 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.”
* In 1997 Tyson bribed former agriculture secretary in the Clinton
administration 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 President Clinton.
Is it any surprise that a company that bribes federal officials and
regulators, pollutes public waterways, mistreats animals and sells
contaminated products would subject workers to a viral outbreak? Already
three Tyson employees have died from the coronavirus.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
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