As the rich and powerful become richer and more powerful, it seems like they take ever more drastic measures to hold onto that status… which ends up being bad for the rest of us. Another thread is about the unsustainable conditions of many jobs in the United States—no sick leave, no vacation, no childcare for working parents… and sometimes, not even bathroom breaks.
Injustice at the workplace, labor rights, inequality… each of these issues converge in a new joint investigation from the Union of Concerned Scientists and news organization The Guardian.
The leads on this investigation, my colleague Rebecca Boehm, a senior economist, and Nina Lakhani, a journalist with The Guardian, took a close look at one company that weaves these threads together in a very ugly tapestry of abuse, exploitation, near-monopolistic practices, and dangerous conditions.
Colleen: Yeah, it's great to have you both here. So, Rebecca, you authored a recent report calling out Tyson Foods for its monopoly-like power in Arkansas that puts workers at risk, threatens public health, and pollutes our air and water. And Nina, you did some investigative reporting on the ground in Arkansas for an article in "The Guardian. Why did you do this analysis?
And why focus on Tyson Foods? Rebecca: So we focused on Tyson foods because they are one of the biggest companies in the food industry. On the Fortune list the are number Last year they had 42 billion dollars in revenue.
They are the biggest meat and poultry processor in the country. And then, the other reason we did this analysis was because concentration and consolidation in the food supply chain are issues increasingly of interest among policymakers and advocates. What data did you look at? Rebecca: So we looked at basically competition in the poultry processing industry in Arkansas, where Tyson is, focused. And we found that since , there has been an alarming increase in the level of concentration in poultry processing there.
Of course, it's led by Tyson, so our data in our analysis, we found that Tyson controls two-thirds of poultry processing in the state. And there's only a handful of other companies who are doing business in the same industry. So we went really basic and fundamental to look at competition in this industry and found really alarming, alarming trends and alarming results. Rebecca: Yeah, so besides seeing how much overall Tyson controls of poultry processing in Arkansas, we found that when you drill down further and look at concentration and competition more locally, the numbers get even worse.
So, just to give a little background on how poultry supply chains work. As this industry has sort of specialized and become very mechanized and, , consolidated, supply chains, everything from the chicks that are raised, that are ultimately slaughtered in a Tyson processing plant to the farms that raised the chickens, which are in industry parlance called the broilers or meat chickens.
So all of that happens in a really small geographic area. USDA research actually shows that on average, the farmers who raise the chickens that are ultimately slaughtered in these big processing plants that like a Tyson operates, they only travel like 34 miles on average to send those chickens to those plants. So everything's really focused in small areas. And so, what we found is that in a lot of counties, actually half of the counties in Arkansas where there is poultry processing, Tyson controls all the processing, there's no other competitor.
And then in the rest of the counties where processing occurs, there's just one or two other companies in play. So there's like very little competition in this industry, what we also found sort of [ So since , Arkansas has lost half of all of its meat-chicken farms.
So you had this sort of specialization, mechanization, growth, and consolidation of poultry processing, which coincided this dramatic loss of farms in the state. So those are just sort of the key findings that we have from the report. Nina: Maybe I'll just start by saying that, , this joint project between "The Guardian" and Union of Concerned Scientists on Tyson in Arkansas is part of a, much bigger project that we've been doing, looking at injustices and inequalities in the food system and in the water system in the U.
And with regard to food, we've really taken a focus on the monopolization of the food industry. You know, who were the winners and losers of this consolidation? So I guess that's what I've really been focused on. So we've looked at the impact of monopolies and near-monopolies on farmers, on workers, on communities, on residents who live nearby these sort of mega plants.
Colleen: So what is life like around Tyson headquarters and their processing plants in the state. Now our big, imposing, stinky plants, the slaughterhouses and processing plants all over the place from downtown Springdale, which is where the company is headquartered, it's also where Walmart is headquartered, really very near the shops, and apartment blocks, and restaurants, to somewhere like Green Forest, which is a huge, huge plant, about an hour and 10 minutes from Springdale, in what is a really tiny, little rural, isolated dusty town, very near a place called Harrison, which has the inglorious title of the most racist place in the U.
And these are plants where it is predominantly black and brown workers. I interviewed people from three different plants in the area, and I was told consistently that the only white Americans working there are those at supervisor and management level. So these are folks, and many of them are documented, not all of them are, many of them are, but they are vulnerable for all sorts of different reasons. And this is an industry, as it's got bigger,..
And so, in these communities, you have these massive plants. And, you know, I think one of the things that struck me straight away is that what is it like to live there? Never mind work there, what is it like to live there? So I started talking to people who just had their houses across the road from the Springdale plant, which is sort of the flagship plant in that region.
And, you know, I met a guy who was just out sitting in his garden, he was 48, Matthew was his name, and his mom had bought that house 40 years ago. He'd lived there that whole time, and the plant had grown exponentially since then. And he said to me, "I haven't had anybody over to my house for 20 years because the smell and the noise can just be so awful. How could I have people here? If he sold it, he'd never be able to buy something anywhere else.
Nina: The workers inside they are coping every day with really the smell of dead animals, and really the noise, I think they described can be intolerable, and impacts their hearing, people suffer from hearing loss. So these are the physical conditions, and then environments where the pressure, and the stress, and the obligation to keep working, to work overtime, to work whether you're sick or injured, which Tyson denies by the way, but absolutely is what everybody described to me.
You know, this incredible pressure that they're under to keep the machine, to keep the lines going, the assembly lines going, keep the mixers mixing at all costs. And it really is, I think, a very difficult environment for people to live and to work, and it's very difficult regardless of Tyson's insistence that people can complain, people can report abuses, people can report issues, people absolutely fear retribution.
There is a points-based punishment system in place, and people don't feel able to speak out. It's a really tense and pressured environment. Nina: Well, first of all, I'll say that Tyson denies that such a system exists. But I was told consistently by everyone I spoke to that workers can be given points, one point, two points, three points for all sorts of different things. So for example, overtime is obligatory. Everybody has to work on Saturday or Sunday, right?
You have no choice. If you don't go in because maybe you're sick or something has happened, and you don't call to tell them you're not going in, you'll get three points. If you call and tell them, "Look, my kid's sick, I can't come in," they'll still give you a point, And maybe you go to the bathroom without asking permission.
Maybe you I heard of a case of a lady who injured herself. She, immediately got a big bruise, her legs slightly swell up, but she wasn't bleeding and the nurse refused to let her go home. In that case, a supervisor even came over and said, "Look, she's really in a lot of pain, let her go," the nurse wouldn't.
So the lady went home anyway, she was awarded points, right? And so at 14 points, you can be fired. Colleen: Are there any regulations? Nina in your article, I think you mentioned that people are given 20 minutes for a lunch break and they have to leave the floor, take their protective clothing off, eat, put their protective clothing on, and get back onto the floor in a ridiculously small amount of time.
Read more about our Chicken and sandwiches. The company makes a wide variety of animal-based, prepared foods and plant-based products at its food processing plants. In industrial slaughterhouses, chickens are killed prior to scalding by being passed through an electrified water-bath while shackled. This method can be used for sheep, calves and swine.
The animal is asphyxiated by the use of CO 2 gas before being killed. In several countries, CO 2 stunning is mainly used on pigs. No one knows how many individual chickens farmed in the U. Each processing plant uses its own water-bath settings, and none makes their settings public. Its plants slaughter approximately , cattle, , pigs, and 45,, chickens every week. Bake them for 30 to 35 minutes, flipping them halfway through. For properly cooked chicken, if you cut into it and the juices run clear , then the chicken is fully cooked.
If the juices are red or have a pinkish color, your chicken may need to be cooked a bit longer. When cooking chicken straight from the freezer, you want to cook for 50 percent longer than you would with unfrozen. Bake thawed tenderloins 18 to 22 minutes. Appliances vary. Cooking times approximate. The conversion of forests for soy production, which is then used in livestock feed, is one of the reasons that the livestock sector is a leading driver of global deforestation and the 1 driver in South America.
Photo credit: Lou Dematteis. In the U. Most recently, the Attorney General of Missouri filed a lawsuit against Tyson Foods accusing the company of illegally discharging untreated wastewater that led to the death of up to , fish. The global food system is responsible for roughly 30 percent of global greenhouse gas GHG emissions——a major contributor for an increasingly unstable climate.
These GHG emissions are produced largely by converting land for agricultural use, particularly from converting forest into farmland for industrial palm oil plantations or the production of feed crops, like soy and corn.
Within the agricultural industry at large, the livestock sector is a major contributor to the emission of greenhouse gases, representing In addition to that, tropical deforestation and forest degradation are responsible for around 15 percent of global GHG emissions; commercial agriculture, largely for export markets, is the primary driver of tropical deforestation.
Palm oil companies illegally burn forests to prepare land for plantations, emitting a thick haze of smoke that shuts down regional air traffic and provokes public health alerts in urban areas hundreds of miles away. Photo credit: Paul Hilton. As a matter of urgency, parent company Tyson Foods and the companies it owns like Hillshire Brands Company, must adopt a responsible food policy with commitments on responsible production of two controversial commodities rampant in its supply chain——palm oil and meat.
Tyson Foods is a laggard company with a weak palm oil commitment that relies solely on the inadequate Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil RSPO certification system and lacks requirements for suppliers to end destruction of rainforests, peatlands and abuse of human and labor rights. Take action today and tell Tyson Foods to adopt a responsible food policy.
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Invest with us. Make a one-time contribution to Alternet All Access , or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click to donate by check. Don't Sit on the Sidelines of History. Support Honest Journalism. Here are 12 reasons why we should all be extremely concerned about Tyson Foods.
Industrial food production. Photo credit: Wikipedia commons 2. Corporate consolidation. Labor rights abuses for conflict palm oil. Poultry workers suffer amputations at three times the rate for all workers—higher than even high-risk occupations like mining. Latina guest worker employee on rapidly moving chicken processing line, Montgomery, Alabama.
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