In 2006, Tyson cooperated with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission in an investigation of the apparent veterinarian bribery but no one was ever named or charged in the investigation. In fact, Greg Lee, Tyson's chief administrative officer, who received the email about the veterinarian, received $1 million when he retired and a $3.6 million consulting contract. Nice.
Greg Huett, who was president of Tyson International during the improper payments, became a director at Yuhe International, China's largest producer of day-old broiler chicks . In 2008 Tyson opened Jiangsu Tyson Foods near Shanghai with a planned production of 1 million birds a week.
Richard Bond, Tyson's president and chief executive said the company intends to become, "the first producer to deliver brand name, high quality fresh chicken to consumers in the eastern China market." Some say it's a matter of time before most US fast food chains serve chicken from China because of lenient to non-existent safety laws allowing a cheaper product.
And then there's the safety of Tyson food itself. In 2007, the Department of Agriculture nixed Tyson's widely-circulated advertising slogan, "Raised Without Antibiotics," because the ionophores it uses are indeed antibiotics.Tyson's fall-back position on its packages was "Raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans," since ionophores are not used in humans.
But the next year the USDA found more serious antibiotic fowl/foul play: Tyson was also using the human antibiotic, gentamicin, behind the public's back!" Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson admitted that eggs were vaccinated with gentamicin, a dangerous human antibiotic, before the birth of a chicken but insisted Tyson products were "wholesome."
Tyson is the '"largest meat producer in the world and a major chicken supplier to McDonald's, KFC, Chick-fil-A, and many others," Alec Baldwin observed this week. It is also probably the most unethical.
(Article changed on December 12, 2015 at 20:42)
(Article changed on December 12, 2015 at 20:45)
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