Tyson Foods Accused of Child Labor, Animal Abuse, and Exploiting DEI in Bombshell Report

The Fair Agriculture Council released a report titled “Woke Tyson Exposed” that breaks down the company’s human rights violations, predatory practices, and wage-stealing that counters its “superficial commitments to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).” 20% of the meat sold in the United States is produced by Tyson, including farmers that are trapped in “debt servitude,” according to the report.

The report details examples of these abuses, including “Child labor, price fixing, worker abuse, animal abuse, wage theft, pollution, bribery, and sexual harassment.” The report states, “For Tyson Foods, it’s all just business.”

“Tyson’s plants are rife with amputations, serious lacerations, chemical burns, and other gruesome injuries,” the report said. “Workers at Tyson plants have been decapitated, crushed, run over, and killed or severely burned by fires and explosions.”

The HighWire reported in February about child labor practices when Senator Josh Hawley said Tyson should be prosecuted for using child labor. Hawley said, “We know from the investigations done by the New York Times and others that they have huge numbers of child labor in their supply chains.” He added that migrant children had been trafficked into the U.S. to work at meat-packing plants and slaughterhouses.

The HighWire reported last fall about the Unaccompanied Child program under the Department of Health and Human Services in which the agency lost contact with 320,000 migrant children who were placed with sponsors who were not properly vetted. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, “We have ended HHS as the role, the principal vector in this country for child trafficking. During the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator for child trafficking, sex, and slavery. We have ended that, and we are very aggressively going out and trying to find these 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration.”

The report says nearly three-quarters of poultry farmers who contract with Tyson Foods and other major meatpacking companies live below the poverty line. “For today’s contract growers, working for Tyson is akin to indentured servitude,” the report’s authors wrote. “Drawn by the promise of economic security, farmers take out million-dollar loans and enter into restrictive contracts with Tyson that give the company near-total control.”

Last June, The HighWire spoke with farmer and attorney Dustin Kittle, who explained how Alabama Farm Credit tried to foreclose on his farm even though Kittle never missed a payment. Kittle also explained how the FCA system, which is supposed to help small farmers, is used to help companies like Tyson expand and increase market share.

The report also details animal abuse. It states, “They are forced to live atop mounds of feces and breathe in the toxic stench of ammonia. Undercover investigations have exposed stomach-churning conditions and treatment: bug-infested feed, animal corpses left to rot, workers beating chickens and tearing their heads off, and numerous other abuses. Once birds reach the slaughter plant, they are hung upside down, electrocuted, and boiled, many while still fully conscious.”

The report also describes monopolistic practices, bribery, conspiracy to smuggle migrants, marketing scams, sexual harassment, and contaminated food with metal shards, rubber, plastic, and potentially deadly bacteria. Tyson was the second biggest polluter of American waterways from 2010 to 2014 as the company dumped 104 million pounds of pollutants during the five year period. That is more than Cargill, Koch Industries, and ExxonMobil combined.

The report criticizes Tyson Foods as a hypocrite for claiming to support minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ+, and DEI policies while actively causing harm to the communities it purports to care about. The report says over one-third of Tyson’s employees are foreign-born immigrants. The company provides assistance with green card applications, citizen applications, and work permits. The authors say that the company only provides these services for its own benefit, as proven by the dangerous work conditions and documented wage theft. 

“Of course, Tyson is not the only company exploiting DEI messaging to garner public favor,” said JC Berger with the Fair Agriculture Council. “A global survey from July 2024 found that 75 percent of consumers say DEI efforts influence their buying decisions, and corporations have long been cashing in. Whether or not that’s happening in practice for Tyson, it’s clear the company capitalized on the idea by heavily promoting its DEI efforts, including awards from Human Rights Campaign and NAMI and changing its logo to include the pride flag.”

Berger said the federal government should improve enforcement of existing antitrust laws and strengthen the existing laws. Like Senator Hawley, Berger called for criminal charges to be brought against the company’s leadership. “The company’s most egregious abuses are often treated as regulatory violations, not crimes, which shields leaders from consequences,” Berger said. “In our society, if one person abuses a child or an animal, it’s a crime. When a corporation like Tyson does this at scale, it’s considered business as usual. That needs to change.”

Ian Somerhalder appeared on The HighWire to discuss the movie Common Ground, which talks about the harms of industrial agriculture. Farm subsidies for corn and soy uplift corporate agriculture models with monocultures and heavy tilling. Berger said $10 billion a year is spent on crop insurance and subsidies, primarily for corn and soy, which is also used as animal feed. Berger said these crop subsidies help Tyson Foods along with the $172 billion the U.S. livestock industry receives in direct subsidies.

Berger added that corporate lobbying laws should be changed to prevent companies that “enable Tyson to wield political power.” Berger said, “Tyson has spent over $30 million on lobbying since the late 1990s and funnels money through trade groups, which spend hundreds of millions to influence policy. As long as this modern form of bribery is allowed, smaller farmers and producers will never be able to compete.”