How Tyson Turns Farmers into Modern-Day Serfs
How Tyson Turns Farmers into Modern-Day Serfs
The Chicken Company that Acts Like a Feudal Lord
This article was written by Ryan Griggs, the founder of The Regenaissance. It is an apparel-based brand that is reconnecting us back to where our food is grown & exposing everything that is wrong with our broken food system. Check it out and help support Ryan’s project here. This article is intended to show how someone who is deeply involved in the animal-raising industry sees the problem posed by Tyson. Next week, we will follow it up with a more in-depth look at how Tyson structures its “deals” with farmers and treats them like serfs, so stay tuned for Part 2!
Jerry and Kanita Yandell, alongside their three sons, had been raising chickens for over two decades for Tyson Foods. In the fall of 2003, a strange, fatal sickness hit their Arkansas farm. Overnight, chickens started dying in piles, the Yandells' livelihood unraveling as each bird perished. Every eight weeks, Tyson would deliver chicks to the Yandells to be fattened up for slaughter six weeks later. This cycle was not just their job but their entire way of life. Yet, that fall, the routine turned into a nightmare. Birds started rotting alive.
It seemed like the birds were dying just a few hours after they were delivered, and not from some ordinary flu. Jerry and Kanita worked 12+ hour days removing the dead birds from the chicken houses in wheelbarrows. Desperate calls for help to Tyson’s technicians only resulted in temporary fixes like “turn up the heat and increase water.”
Christmas approached, and reality set in: nothing worked and the disease decimated their flock and finances. Over $260,000 in debt from building chicken houses, the Yandells faced the collapse of both their farm and their home. Then, when Tyson's crew came to collect the last of the dying birds, they wore biohazard suits as if fending off a plague.
Tyson's business model shows why the Yandells had no escape. It's called vertical integration. Tyson controls every step from egg to slaughterhouse. The birds start and end their lives within Tyson's facilities. Meanwhile, farmers like the Yandells are caught in a cycle controlled entirely by Tyson, never owning the chickens or even the feed they eat. Their job is to raise the chickens as fast and efficiently as possible, and hopefully make enough to pay their fixed costs. Tyson dictates every detail, from feed to medication, and sets the prices for the grown birds, deducting their costs directly from what they owe farmers.
It's a rigged game where the only guaranteed winner is Tyson. The farmer owns nothing, not even the right to negotiate. Contracts can be canceled anytime, leaving farmers like the Yandells powerless, their lives tethered to the fate of the next flock Tyson delivers. And when Tyson delivered diseased birds, it was a serious problem.The Yandells took on debt to build their chicken houses.
If they didn't receive healthy chickens that could grow to a decent weight before being picked up from Tyson, they would see a loss. Unfortunately, this is what happened! With their farm failing, the Yandells faced the heartbreak of auctioning off everything they had built. Tractors, tools, and even personal belongings were sold one by one in bankruptcy. Even their home, which Jerry had built by hand, was repossessed!
Why does this matter? Our modern food system is controlled by just a handful of powerful corporations, and we need to return to a more simple, local, and fair way of life where farmers are in control of their destinies!
To add even more context to Tyson’s power in America, they are currently ranked 80th on the Fortune 500 list, account for 25% of the US poultry production, and have the largest share of chicken plants in the US.
Further, they act irresponsibly and destroy the environment, as shown by this story:1
If you don’t have time to read the whole Daily Mail story, the short story is that Tyson dumped millions of gallons of horrific pollutants into our waterways. That pollutant dumping spanned 17 states from 41 different slaughterhouses. There is already a major dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and this will only worsen it. Here’s a map of the dumping locations:
That’s not all. Additionally, Tyson dumped chicken feces in the waterway en masse, polluting our water and potentially spreading the Avian flu. Its plants process ~47 million chickens a week. Each chicken creates 2 and1/2 lbs of feces in a 6-7 week timespan. And they ended up just dumping that into waterways. These nasty conditions also create hotbeds for diseases such as the avian bird flu. As Reuters reported:2
Tyson acts like a modern version of the worst of the feudal lords. It has essentially turned the farmers into slaves who have zero control over what they can do, bankrupting many in the process. Further, Tyson does not care about the quality and care of the animals, what they are fed, and how the farmers and plant workers are treated. All Tyson cares about is how quickly the chickens can be fattened (pumped with antibiotics to fatten them up even more, even faster) and shipped out to slaughter. This is why it’s imperative to shake the hand that feeds you, not only are you supporting better health for yourself, the land, and the animals, but you are supporting a decentralized food system, and giving power back to farmers and ranchers.