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On January 1, 2001 megaconglomerate chicken processor Tyson Foods outbid Smithfield Foods for the ownership of Iowa Beef Packers (IBP), the world’s largest processor of beef and pork products. This buyout created the largest meat consolidation the world has ever seen. On this date three years ago IBP became Tyson Fresh Meats, which provides over 80 nations from the world’s largest supply of wholesale and retail dead cows, chicken, and swine.

Last year Tyson “committed to delivering more than just beef in a box” Fresh Meats turned over $14.4 billion in profit from the slaughter, packaging, and distribution of hormone-injected meat products, which are mostly sold in the US. Aside from the obvious health risks and ethical concerns from a meat-based diet there are many social and environmental implications from a meat-based diet that are often ignored. The meat packing industry, particularly large corporations like Tyson, have for decades exercised political power in Washington that have chipped away at the power of unionized workforces, small family-owned businesses, and environmental regulations.

Bush’s Environmental Policies Encourage Industry Pollution

In April 2001, the Bush administration took its first whack at health regulations on the beef industry, ending mandatory testing for salmonella in hamburger meat served in federal school lunch programs. Intense lobbying by Tyson to ditch the testing and instead irradiate the beef was adopted and is now common practice. School lunches are now serving “Nuke Burgers”. Mmm…

America’s air and water quality has been under attack by Bush since early on in the administration. In December 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a final rule on controlling factory farm pollution simply by ignoring it. The EPA’s new ruling, originally designed to update regulations made in the 70s under the Clean Water Act, stripped Clinton-era regulations that would have protected the environment. Considering Bush’s $506,085 industry contributions during his 2000 election, it’s no wonder the new EPA rulings have created such a sweet deal for corporate run factory farms.

Under the new regulations, here are a few things we can look forward to:

Legalization of discharge of runoff contaminated with nitrogen, phosphorus, bacteria and metals into already polluted rivers and streams;

Factory farms are now allowed to write their own permit conditions;

Corporations that own livestock will be shielded from any liability from the damage they cause.

But don’t be alarmed. George assures us that, “it isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” Whew.

What about the workers?

The American food supply has become increasingly dependant upon immigrant (primarily Mexican) labor for its production. While this has collectively become known throughout the agriculture industry, the meatpacking industry employs the second largest number of immigrant workers in their factories. It is also the industry with the highest rate of injury among its workers. Whether it is from repetitive stress (typically a line worker makes one cut of the knife over and over in the same fashion for 10 hours daily), sickness (from the literal tons of excrement found on the floors, machines, and clothing of the workers in a meat factory), or death by heavy machinery, injury and death runs rampant in meat factories.

Now just for a minute let’s set aside the corporate welfare given to Tyson by the federal government each year. Let’s forget that the meat lobbyists work hard and deliver millions of dollars every year to subsidize the price of beef so that McDonalds can sell hamburgers for 59 cents. Imagine that this is not true. How, do you suppose, the industry could sell such a product at such a low cost? It couldn’t. And it can’t, even with the millions of dollars in subsidies it gets every year. But it can by paying illegal workers scraps under the table.

The largely illegal immigrant labor force that holds up the beef and pork industry is what makes your ground chuck cheaper than a brick of tofu. Workers in meat packing plants, like the 21 that are run by Tyson, are forbidden to unionize, earn wages comparable to women working on the US-Mexico border in sweatshops sewing Gap jeans. And they can do it because they have a continuous stream of immigrants, desperate for work in the United States. They have even been known to recruit from across the border. In December of 2001 Tyson Foods was indicted on charges that it conspired to smuggle illegal immigrants to work at its plants.

Until about 15 years ago, meatpacking plants in the US employed a unionized labor force and employees earned an average of $18 per hour. This all started to change as the consolidation of the industry took place. Today an average (legal) meat-packer starts off at $6 per hour. A few years ago a study by the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that 25 percent of meatpacking workers at any given time were illegal immigrants. Compared to USDA statistics of 40% illegal immigrant workforce in agriculture, and meatpacking is the second highest industry to use illegal labor.