Tyson might be the poster child for what is wrong with BigFood right now in America. They are the largest meat and poultry producer. Tyson is getting sued by just about everyone: small farms, employees, states, overseas companies, the Civil Rights Commission, and even their shareholders. Smaller meat farms took Tyson to court for being a monopoly and controlling meat prices and by Alabama state for killing 175,000 fish. Tyson employees or employee’s families have multiple lawsuits for unsafe working conditions  which have lead to Covid deaths for Tyson employees.  And the European Union and England will not buy their Tyson meat since at least some chickens are washed in chlorine to clean the chickens. Sales in 2019 were $42 billion, so they have plenty of money to pay for all these lawsuits. Tyson’s new motto might be “Dirty chickens and dirty money.”

“Dirty chickens and dirty money.”

Tyson Foods’ top six executives earned a combined $38.524 million in 2019.

The guy who ran Tyson for eight months in 2020, Dean Banks, made $12,782,054 in total compensation, but who knows how many more millions he made in his golden parachute payout? Probably millions more. Tyson faced many expensive lawsuits under Dean Banks, so he left to spend “more time with his family.” Before Mr. Banks, Noel White’s package for being the CEO of Tyson Foods was $10,398,200 a year. Mr. White lasted about two years. No word on the total compensation of his golden parachute or severance pay either.

Tyson has a long history of cases that have been to trial.  Here are just seven of them

  1. Tyson are a monopoly, so you are paying more for your meat. They overcharge consumers and cut out small poultry farms by acting as a monopoly. How do they do it?  Big Poultry  manipulates the price of poultry. Big Poultry passes information through a private service named Agri-Stats. Agri-Stats is owned by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.   Maplevale Farms, Inc. filed a civil lawsuit against Big Poultry, including Tyson, accusing them of conspiring through the subscription service Agri-Stats to set artificial price points that affected not only supplier wholesalers but also retailers. If you thought your chicken was getting more expensive, it wasn’t just you. So a lawsuit was filed for conspiring to raise the price of chicken and other meat products by the smaller farm Maplevale. Today at Agri-Stats’s headquarters in Fort Wayne, many people work together to operate what is the most detailed records any agricultural economy keeps. Agri-States also get updates right away, which means your sales purchase when you buy chicken goes in real-time back to Agri-Stats. Buy a chicken in your local Kroger or Albertson grocery chain that invoice goes right back to Agri-Stats. Wow, nothing says monopoly and price-fixing more than Agri-States. In another lawsuit, Tyson paid $4.6 million to settle the turkey price-fixing case.
  2. There are multiple lawsuits from their employees.  Tyson just might be the unsafest place to work in America. Tyson is fighting numerous cases on behalf of employees that die of Covid.   One lawsuit involved 38 Tyson workers from the Tyson Amarillo, Texas plant allegedly sickened or killed by the Covid-19 virus.   In another lawsuit against Tyson by the family of Michael Everhard, they state that, Tyson Foods knowing how dangerous it was for their employee Michael Everhard, continued to place Michael Everhard unsafe, poorly ventilated work environment without proper safety measures. The son of Isidro Fernandez, of the Waterloo, Iowa facility brought another lawsuit. Five others died of Covid at the Iowa plant. The family of Pedro Cano Rodriguez, who died from Covid while he was working at the  Columbus Jackson sued Tysone and the meat packing plant. I am a nurse, so those are some serious numbers for people getting sick and dying at Tyson. We lost many nurses and doctors to Covid but to have these types of numbers at a meat processing company is staggering. And of course, these are only the people that have come forward, so there probably is a lot more.
  3. Their shareholders sued them!  In addition to overpriced CEOs, wrongful-death claims, and price-fixing, even Tyson’s shareholders are suing the company. Tyson’s shareholders state that Tyson executives failed to protect front-line workers and making false claims about risks associated with the pandemic.
  4. Civil Rights sued them.  Working at the Tyson plant is worse than working at an Amazon warehouse. They have the same no bathroom break policies and repetitive stress injuries. Tyson workers still get clawed by chickens.  Or dealing with noxious odors and chemicals in their workplace  air.  And let’s not forget many workers have to  work in freezing temperatures. Most workers are minorities, so there is a Civil Rights lawsuit against Tyson.
  5. Europe won’t sell their chickens. Due to concerns about the safety of U.S. chickens, America hasn’t been able to sell their chickens in Europe since 1997. American chickens are not imported into he European Union (E.U.).  And you can’t get an American grown chicken in London either. The reason why? The United States allows washing chicken in chlorine and other disinfectants to remove harmful bacteria. But this practice was banned by the European Union (E.U.) in 1997 over food safety concerns. Why do many American chickens get chlorinated? Proponents say it is healthy as it produces meat without fecal matter and potentially dangerous germs, such as campylobacter and salmonella. On the GlobalMeatPodcast  Chad Martin of Tyson said the chlorinated chicken process is perfectly safe. But not only E.U. and London say it isn’t safe; animal welfare campaigners say it isn’t safe.
  6. States are suing them.  In 2020, the state of Alabama sued Tyson for damages and the state of Missouri caused by two releases from one of its facilities that killed an estimated 175 000 fish.
  7. Instead of football pool, there was a pool at Tyson for guessing the correct number of employees who get Covid – winner takes all.  The saddest of all is that instead of a football pool like you find at most businesses, the Tyson Iowa City plant, the Waterloo plant. Manager Tom Hart “organized a cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager on how many employees would test positive for COVID-19.” So Tyson is getting sued for the Covid Pool by the estates of Sedika Buljic, 58; Reberiano Garcia, 60; Jose Ayala Jr., 44; and Isidro Fernandez, age unknown. Buljic, Garcia, and Fernandez died in April 2020, and Ayala died May 25, 2020, after a six-week hospitalization.

Chickens get washed in chlorine because of dirty and overcrowded slaughterhouses.

The goal of any business is, of course, to make money. But there’s a difference between making money and treating their employees, customers, environment, and even shareholders like garbage in the process. If you’re considering buying chicken from a company that has an “us vs. them” mentality, think about how they treat their employees and customers before buying their chicken. A business that treats its people like disposable items or sub-humans probably won’t be willing to put in the extra effort needed to keep its customers happy. Buy your chicken at a local butcher or try vegan chickens but please buy anything but Tyson.

 

What can you do? Buy local. Reach out to small farms.  Try vegan chicken.  Try other protein sources of protein, like beans.  But please don’t let Tyson keep getting richer!

Tyson Foods, Inc. has reached an agreement to pay $221.5 million.

It is very bleak that on January 11, 2020. Tyson Foods, Inc. has reached an agreement in the broiler chicken antitrust civil price-fixing litigation brought against the company and many other poultry processors to pay $221.5 million. Here is why Tyson decided to pay $221.5 million:

      “(Tyson Foods) believes that the settlements were in the best interests of the company and its shareholders to avoid the uncertainty, risk, expense, and distraction of protracted litigation,” the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. So they do not want to admit to being guilty, pay the fine, and life goes on.

 

The truth about the Tyson is coming to light. Last century we believed that tobacco was okay, too. It took many lawsuits to break BigTobacco! Plus, here in the United States, we have one of the highest rates of people getting food poisoning in the industrial nations, and this is horrible that no one is regulating our food.  And Tyson with its dirty money and dirty chickens isn’t helping.