Of course there's something worse than illegal employees: undercover ones.
In December 2004 and February 2005, an undercover investigator with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) gained employment at Tyson's Heflin, AL chicken plant and videotaped workers ripping off chickens' heads manually, malfunctioning throat-cutting machines which mutilated birds and a plant manager saying it was acceptable if up to 40 birds per shift were scalded alive. http://www.torturedbytyson.com/
Two years later undercover employees at Tyson's Cumming, GA and Union City, TN plants documented additional atrocities and workers urinating in the live-hang area.
Tyson responded by firing several workers at the Cumming and Union City plants--it wouldn't say how many or if any were managers--and disciplining and retraining others in animal welfare.
But the 2003 disclosures of its own employee, Virgil Butler, who worked at its Grannis, AK plant for five years suggest a pattern of abuse. Butler described birds scalded alive, left to freeze to death and exploded with dry ice by employees for their amusement.
Some say Tyson's "Teflon" conviction history bespeaks friends in high places.
Who can forget the charges that it bribed agriculture secretary 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 Clinton.
But Tyson officials see it differently.
"If we've got all this political power, how come the government keeps doing this to us?" asked former chief marketing officer Bob Corscadden.
Now Tyson is capitalizing on unmet demand for chicken in China by opening Jiangsu Tyson Foods in Haiman City, near Shanghai, which will produce 400,000 birds a week at first with plans to increase production to 1 million birds a week.
Richard Bond, Tyson's president and chief executive says the company intends to become, "the first producer to deliver brand name, high quality fresh chicken to consumers in the eastern China market."
