GOD AND CHICKENS: Tyson Foods Sells Religion to Cover Up Its Dirty Doings

Ad Age reports today that the giant international mega-conglomerate Tyson Foods -- twice as large as any competitor in the meat-and-chicken industry -- is now trying to sell God along with its chickens, beef, and pre-prepared frozen meals. Tyson is distributing "mealtime prayer booklets" for a variety of faiths all over the world. Under the headline, "TYSON LAUNCHES FAITH-FRIENDLY MARKETING CAMPAIGN," Ad Age reports: "What started out as the internal manifestation of Tyson’s mission statement -- a set of core values that includes 'striving to be a faith-friendly company…and to honor God…' -- has over the last few years morphed into placing 128 part-time chaplains in 78 plants across the country and, now, the external marketing initiative to play a part in mealtime prayer." Tyson's chairman, born-again John Tyson, Ad Age notes, is a sometime drug addict and alcoholic.

Alll this godbothering is, of course, designed to cover up Tyson's dirty record as a rapacious, union-busting, exploitative corporation that endangers the lives of its workers, exploits immigrant labor, and doesn't stop at utilizing violence and fraud to achieve its reactionary goals. Blood, Sweat and Fear, a recent report by Human Rights Watch, condemned Tyson for violating the basic human rights of its workers by allowing unsafe working conditions at many of its production facilities and using illegal means to stop their joining unions: Tyson workers "contend with conditions, vulnerabilities, and abuses which violate human rights," said the January, 2005 HRW report. Just four years ago, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service charged Tyson Foods and six company execs with running a massive ring to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. After a two-and-a-half year investigation, the INS alleged that Tyson had smuggled illegal immigrants to work at 15 Tyson plants in nine states.  Undercover INS agents, who'd posed as 'recruiters,' testified that Tyson managers had asked them to smuggle in more than 2,000 workers. Two Tyson managers pleaded guilty. Another one committed suicide. And the Human Rights Watch report details the inhuman treatment to which Tyson's workers are subjected during the hiring process and after their hiring.

Prayer booklets? Did I hear someone say "hypocrisy?" Tyson, which employs -- and uses every ruse imaginable to underpay 300,000-plus workers, is a nearly entirely family-owned business. And the Tyson family are a bunch of crooks who enrich themselves on the backs of their exploited employees.  In April 2005, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Tyson Foods and former chairman and company patriarch Don Tyson (right) for filing misleading disclosures, and Tyson Foods was forced to pay $1.5 million in fines, while Don Tyson was ordered to pay a $700,000 penalty. The SEC found that while Don Tyson was chairman, the company provided an estimated $3 million US in perquisites and personal benefits to Tyson, his wife, their daughters, and three close personal friends, including $8,000 for a horse, $20,000 for oriental rugs, $84,000 for lawn maintenance at the family's homes, and $203,675 in personal housekeeping services. The SEC held that many of those perks were unauthorized by the board, and not properly disclosed to shareholders. Meanwhile, Tyson Foods breaks laws to stop its workers joining unions and seeking decent wages and benefits. Do you really think Tyson's workers would be better off if they said one of the company's prayers before sitting down to their infinitely-less-than-lavish meals?

Tyson uses violence, among other impermissible and illegal tactics, to try to stop union organizing. Just two months ago, in October, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) charged Tyson exec Andrew Crocker, head of security at its Lakeside, Canada, plant,  and Carey Kopp, the company's director of human resources, with five criminal charges, including criminal harassment and intimidation, after a car chase which ended when the car of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 President Doug O'Halloran (right) was forced off the road and crashed in a ditch. Four other men with ties to the plant were also charged in the incident. I suppose trying to intimidate or kill a union rep is fulfilling the company's "mission statement" pledging to "honor God." (Photo left, born-again corporate scumbags John and Don Tyson, the company's bosses.)

Tyson is a blatantly racist company as well. In August 2005, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a suit against Tyson’s Foods alleging that its Alabama-based facility maintained a “whites-only” bathroom and that managers sternly disciplined Black workers who complained about it.  A “Whites Only” sign was posted above the bathroom, which was kept locked.  Keys were distributed to white employees only.  The EEOC’s lawsuit was prompted by Tyson’s failure to resolve the matter through regular conciliation channels. Four years earlier, the U.S. Labor Department fined Tyson $230,000 to settle allegations of discriminatory hiring practices against women and African-Americans at its Forest, Miss., poultry plant.  The agency's investigation found that Tyson discriminated against qualified women who applied for entry-level laborer jobs and qualified African Americans who applied for craft positions.

Where money is concerned, Tyson is an ethical sewer. The company was accused not long ago by the U.S. Labor Department of cheating its workers out of $340 million in “lost” wage hours. And, in case you've forgotten,Tyson Foods pleaed guilty to bribery 1997 and paid out $6 million in fines after it corrupted Bill Clinton's Agriculture Secretary, Mike Espy. The two Tyson executives jailed in the case were later conveniently pardoned by Pres. Clinton.

Tyson doesn't even stop at illegally using child labor and endangering the lives of the kids it employs. In 1998, Tyson was fined $59,274, the maximum allowed at the time, for violating child labour laws after a 15-year-old boy was electrocuted and killed while working at a chicken slaughtering plant in Arkansas, and after a 14-year-old was seriously injured in a poultry processing plant in Missouri, when he fell into an auger and suffered severe nerve damage and second-degree burns to both legs.  Both teens had been working late at night, long past the quitting time required by U.S. child labour laws.

Tyson ignores elemental safety protections for its workers. To take just one example, Tyson's Henderson, Ky, complex was slapped by Kentucky OSHA with a record-breaking $269,000 in fines from citations for 73 serious health and safety violations. In Alberta, Canada, the province's Minister for Labor found that Tyson workers were kept working so many  long hours without being permitted a bathroom break  that workers were wetting their pants.

By the way, if you want to know how those Tyson chickens you buy are killed and processed, visit the website Tortured by Tyson, which even has videos of the horrifying way the poor birds are scalded alive. I'm no vegan, but this is a bit much even for a carnivore like me.

One of the prayers offered in Tyson's religious booklets -- this one taken from Tyson's "Giving Thanks at Mealtime" page on its website -- reads, "We thank you, loving Father, For all your tender care, For food, and clothes, and shelter, And all your world so fair." But if multiple government agencies can't make Tyson itself "fair" or just or even stop its criminal activities, you can bet Tyson-scripted prayers won't either.

The Tyson Foods record of criminality, skullduggery, and inhumane treatment of its workers is too long to recount all of it here. For more info, see the SourceWatch page on Tyson, or go to the website of the United Food and Commercial Workers union and type "Tyson" into its search engine. And you'll find plenty on Tyson when you wade through the Human Rights Watch report on the food processing industry, "Blood, Sweat, and Fear."