Have You Had Your Tyson Today?
Have You Had Your Tyson Today?
The Chicken Giant's Processing Plants Discharged Hundreds of Millions Of Pounds Of Pollutants Into U.S. Waterways, According To New Report
Chicken is big business in our country. Americans eat more chicken than any other country in the world, according to the National Chicken Council. Each year, the chicken industry, which consists of more than 30 large companies, raises and slaughters almost 9.4 billion chickens for food.
At the top of that chicken chain is Tyson, an Arkansas-based multinational corporation, which processes and sells almost $13 billion worth of chickens each year and leads in the production of ready-to-cook poultry products.
Tyson Foods is one of the world’s largest food companies, and it also has a huge impact on our water.
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists by. Omanjana Goswami, Stacy Woods details how Tyson-owned meat processing plants and slaughterhouses released more than 371.72 million pounds of pollutants directly into U.S. waterways between 2018 and 2022. We’re talking rivers, lakes, ponds, and other bodies of water.
The scientists used publicly available data from the EPA to estimate the quantity and geospatial distribution of Tyson's water discharge, and included Tyson facilities that piped wastewater directly into waterways, threatening surface and groundwater quality.
Thousands of animals living together in cramped facilities leads to big pollution problems at commercial chicken farms and processing facilities. They produce enormous amounts of waste.
Oftentimes, manure gets stored in massive piles near the facility that can leak into the water system. In addition, slaughterhouses use millions of gallons of water to flush away tons of chicken guts, heads, feathers, and blood. While facilities are required to treat the water before they release it, toxins still slip through.
Pollutants from Tyson plants pose a risk to people and the environment and include large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. Almost a third of this toxic load, more than 111 million pounds of pollutants, was discharged in Nebraska alone.
The largest single source of water discharges in Nebraska during the study period was the Dakota City Tyson Fresh Meats facility, one of the nation’s largest processing plants, according to the report. It made headlines in April 2020 for a deadly and widespread COVID-19 outbreak that sickened 15 percent of its workforce.
Right behind the Cornhusker State were Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan. All four Midwestern states are home to high-volume emitting plants, in an area that is already saturated with nitrogen and phosphorus from excessive fertilizer use, primarily from large industrial monoculture corn and soy farms.
The company has a long record of criminal prosecutions for both pollution and labor practices. Tyson can treat even hefty fines and penalties for polluting the environment as simply the cost of conducting business.
Tyson was the second-biggest polluter of our waterways from 2010 to 2014, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, ranking only behind AK Steel and just above the U.S. Department of Defense.
Let’s look a little closer at that history.
In 2003, Tyson pleaded guilty to 20 felony violations of the Clean Water Act at its Sedalia, Missouri, poultry plant, paying $7.5 million to the U.S. and the state of Missouri. Tyson admitted to having illegally discharged untreated wastewater from its poultry-processing plant into a tributary of the Lamine River. The plant processed about 1 million chickens per week, generating hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater each day.
Between 1996 and 2001, Tyson repeatedly discharged untreated or inadequately treated wastewater from its plant. Despite several citations from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, numerous warnings, administrative orders, two state court injunctions, and the execution of a federal search warrant at the Sedalia facility to stop its illegal discharges, Tyson continued to dump untreated wastewater through its storm drains.
The Justice Department fined Tyson $2 million in August 2009 for dumping its waste into the Missouri River. Tyson paid another $5.2 million in February 2011 to settle allegations that the company had bribed Mexican officials to certify chicken products for export. In September of that same year, Tyson paid $32 million to settle a 12-year litigation over whether the company should pay its hourly poultry-plant workers for the time it took them to change into and out of their work clothes and protective gear.
In 2015, Tyson was held liable for the contamination of Clear Creek, Missouri, that resulted in the killing of at least 100,000 fish. The company was sentenced to pay more than $530,000 in penalties, damages, and environmental improvements.
Despite its previous lawbreaking ways, the company has publicized its commitment to sustainable food production and to expand efforts for a better workplace.
“At Tyson, we are continuously working to support the communities where we live and work and ensure our products are responsibly produced,” wrote John Randal Tyson, the company’s executive vice president & CFO, in Tyson’s 2022 sustainability report.
In that same report, the company shares that they received Alliance for Water Stewardship certification at three U.S. plants. Tyson also discusses in the report how they implements site-specific initiatives to help reduce water consumption, as well as quality targets to reduce nutrient risks to water sources.
To date, they have completed water plans at seven sites:
Finney County, Kansas
Seguin, Texas
North Richland Hills, Texas
Amarillo, Texas
Vernon, Texas
Dexter, Missouri
Temperanceville, Virginia
In 2023, Tyson reported $52.88 billion in revenue, a total that earned this publicly traded company the number 80 spot in the Fortune 500 list of the highest revenue-generating companies in the United States. Profits have soared among higher meat prices and food inflation.
It makes it all the more upsetting that such a resourced company says it’s committed to water stewardship, while this new report discloses such a heavy burden on our natural resources.
It’s time to stop polluting for profit.
Keep the conversation going in the comments below. Are you feeling concerned about the waterways near you?