Climate Change: How Consumer Brands Implement Climate Reporting at a Global Scale. October 2, 2024

 

Ready for the real-world application of climate reporting? A few weeks ago we brought you a comprehensive guide to decode the alphabet soup of climate regulations and voluntary frameworks. If you're ready to dig deeper with us, we invite you to join our upcoming Catalysts Series webinar on October 2nd - How Consumer Brands Implement Climate Reporting at a Global Scale.   We'll move from the foundation into how climate-forward food and consumer brands - with complex supply chains - are putting theory into practice. You'll hear from sustainability leaders from Decathlon and regulatory experts from Planet FWD and Anthesis.    We'll explore real-world strategies for navigating: • CSRD • ESPR and Digital Product Passport • California's SB 253 and SB 261 • SBTi and FLAG requirements   This Catalysts webinar is designed for those who already have a good grasp of the fundamentals through our guide, and are ready to take the next step. Whether you're a sustainability professional, C-suite executive, or part of a regulatory and reporting team, you'll gain practical knowledge to enhance your company's carbon reporting capabilities and catalyze change from within your organization.     RESERVE YOUR SPOT   Speakers: Anna Turrell, Chief Sustainability Officer at Decathlon (former Nestle) Charlie Quann, Head of Corporate Reporting & Decarbonization at Planet FWD Pearl Nemeth, Global Sustainability Regulation at Anthesis Group     Can't make it live? No worries. Register anyway and you'll receive the recording to watch when you can. Forwards are always welcome - invite your team or share around internally.     Our goal is to make it easier for you to drive climate action. This regulatory series is designed to simplify the rules and regs so you can keep moving your sustainability strategy forward.

 

Can Scientific Thinking Save the World? 2024

 

Can Scientific Thinking Save the World?   A physicist, a philosopher and a psychologist are working together to bring better, smarter decision-making to the masses Lee Billings

Tyson Foods released millions of pounds of pollution into U.S. waterways, including in Missouri | KCUR - Kansas City news and NPR

 [...Meat processing company Tyson Foods released at least 371.7 million pounds of pollution into U.S. waterways between 2018 and 2022, according to a report released this week from the Union of Concerned Scientists.]...

Tyson Foods released millions of pounds of pollution into U.S. waterways, including in Missouri

St. Louis Public Radio | By Eric Schmid
Published May 4, 2024 at 4:00 AM CDT

The Tyson plant in Noel, MO. The company settled price fixing lawsuits for more than $200 million without admitting any guilt.
Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

The Tyson plant in Noel, MO. The company settled price fixing lawsuits for more than $200 million without admitting any guilt.
The majority of the pollutants released by Tyson in the five years the study examines were in the Midwestern states of Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.

Meat processing company Tyson Foods released at least 371.7 million pounds of pollution into U.S. waterways between 2018 and 2022, according to a report released this week from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It’s the first time Tyson’s individual impact on the environment has been examined in this way, said Omanjana Goswami, one of the study’s authors. She said one of the goals of this study was to help consumers understand how major food companies with deep market penetration affect the environment.

“Companies like Tyson Foods have a massive hold on our farming system,” she said. “If you’ve bought chicken at the supermarket or if you’ve eaten nuggets at McDonalds, you’ve most likely been a consumer of Tyson Foods. It’s really hard to avoid.”

The analysis examines publicly available data on discharges from Tyson’s plants that have a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Goswami said. It identifies 30 pollutants released including chloride, nitrogen, phosphorus and a handful of other metals.

“There’s a long laundry list of pollutants that Tyson releases every year,” Goswami said.

Of the 371.7 million pounds of pollutants released, the study finds nitrogen accounted for 34.2 million pounds and phosphorus accounted for 5.1 million pounds. Both of these nutrients can harm plant and animal life in waterways when found in excess.

On top of that, the majority of the pollutants released by Tyson in the five years the study examines were in the Midwestern states of Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri, she said. It’s a part of the country that already has excessive nitrogen and phosphorus running off from farms.

“You see a large part of the pollution is clustered around the Mississippi River Basin,” Goswami said. “Eventually, a lot of this flows into the Mississippi River, which then finds its way to the Gulf of Mexico, which then has this massive hypoxic dead zone.”

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico has been a problem for decades. The overabundance of nutrients can starve aquatic life of oxygen, said Kelly McGinnis, executive director of the Mississippi River Network.

“Fish and things that can easily swim away are able to,” she said. “Shrimp and other invertebrates often aren’t.”

Upstream, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution can cause issues in local communities too, McGinnis said.

“If you live in a community that is having excessive nutrients, then your wastewater treatment plant is going to be working harder to treat that water,” she said.

Those who rely on well water may need to test it to ensure it’s safe to use, McGinnis said. Excessive nutrients in local waterways can also lead to harmful algal blooms, making them unsafe for recreation and even fatal for dogs, livestock and other animals, she added.

Likely an undercount
While the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists identified hundreds of millions of pounds of pollution by Tyson, it’s not a complete look at the whole meat industry, or even all of Tyson’s operations. Goswami explained that’s because they could not examine pollution data from smaller Tyson plants that don’t meet the threshold to require a NPDES permit from the EPA.

“Which means what they are releasing is going on unchecked in terms of both quantity of pollutants as well as category and type of pollutants,” she said. “And we are not able to capture that data.”

The EPA estimates about 300 of the 7,000 meat processing plants in the country need permits to discharge pollution, Goswami explained. She said because such a small number of plants are required to report, researchers are “looking at a scale of pollution whose ceiling we can’t quantify.”

McGinnis noted the report only examines meat processing facilities, which are one part of the meat supply chain.

“My mind could not help but make a connection to the concentrated animal feeding operations that are also operating in these same areas,” she said. “This report shows an astonishing impact on water quality by one company and it seems there’s so much deeper we can go.”

A Tyson spokesperson said the company constantly monitors the wastewater coming from its facilities and works with federal and state regulators and local municipalities when planning and designing their discharge systems.

“Tyson Food uses a robust management system to mitigate environmental risks and impact, and we strive to run our operations as responsible stewards of our natural resources,” the spokesperson said. “This report does not acknowledge our ongoing compliance with EPA regulations and certification by the Water Alliance for our strong water management practices.”

The report does note the $2 million criminal fine Tyson paid in 2018 for violating the Clean Water Act in Missouri and the $3 million settlement in 2021 over illegal wastewater discharge that killed hundreds of thousands of fish in Alabama. Tyson’s annual revenue in 2023 was more than $50 billion.

“When you’re able to have that kind of wealth concentrated in a company, they are not deterred by the fines that the current structure of the systems have in place,” McGinnis said. “We know there’s other large scale companies like Tyson.”

The EPA is updating its wastewater pollution regulations for meat processing industries, particularly setting new rules for nitrogen and phosphorus, Goswami said.

“We’ve known, historically and based on the agenda that these companies have of prioritizing profit, that they’re most likely going to push back on regulations like this,” she said.

McGinnis agrees there needs to be more regulations in place, but also argues large companies like Tyson need to shift how they consider and measure success.

“Climate change is only going to exacerbate the impacts of water pollution,” she said. “I think that means for a company like Tyson, are there other metrics of successful business besides just your profits?”

Copyright 2024 St. Louis Public Radio

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News pollutionWaterwater qualityTysonEPAenvironment

Eric Schmid
Eric Schmid covers Economic Development for St. Louis Public Radio. He's primarily focused on examining policies and ideas to drive population and business growth throughout the St. Louis region.

© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
About KCUR

 

https://www.kcur.org/news/2024-05-04/tyson-foods-released-millions-of-pounds-of-pollution-into-u-s-waterways-including-in-missouri

Rudy Arredondo
Founder/Director 
Latino Farmers & Ranchers International, Inc.
Mobile: (301) 366-8200
Email: latinofarmers@gmail.com

Chicken farmers sue Tyson after the company closed a Missouri plant and ended their contracts | KCUR - Kansas City news and NPR

 

Chicken farmers sue Tyson after the company closed a Missouri plant and ended their contracts

Harvest Public Media | By Frank Morris
Published September 17, 2024 at 4:00 AM CDT

Shawn Hinkle stands inside of one of his empty chicken houses. Hinkle had a contract with Tyson, until August of last year, when the company announced it was closing its processing plant in nearby Dexter, Missouri.

Frank Morris/Harvest Public Media
Shawn Hinkle stands inside of one of his empty chicken houses. Hinkle had a contract with Tyson, until August of last year, when the company announced it was closing its processing plant in nearby Dexter, Missouri.

Commercial chicken farmers literally bet the farm, spending millions of dollars on land and enormous chicken houses to raise birds they never own — putting their livelihoods in the hands of a single company that is both their supplier and sole buyer. When Tyson closed a processing plant in southeast Missouri, some farmers facing bankruptcy decided to sue.

Imagine an idyllic painting of a farm, a big red barn down a windy road on green fields hemmed in by forested hills, a couple of horses trotting around.

That’s where Shawn Hinkle and his dad Ken Hinkle farm – for now.

Four red chicken houses, each stretching precisely 500 feet long, stand lined up like barracks on a military base. The elder Hinkle built this farm up with years of very early mornings, long hours tending livestock and a deputy sheriff’s salary.

My whole life is right here,” said Ken Hinkle looking out over the chicken houses. “This is life! This is blood running through that vein.”

But the Hinkles’ farm is bleeding out. Their enormous chicken houses are empty, save a few stray feathers, dusty machinery and sharp-smelling mulch.

“The single worst decision that I ever made was building those chicken houses,” laments Shawn Hinkle. “Because it’s put everything behind me and in front of me in jeopardy. And that’s a weight that will crush any man.”

Shawn Hinkle and his wife, Kiley Hinkle, stand outside one of four chicken houses on their farm in southeast Missouri. The barns now stand empty after Tyson closed its facility in Dexter, Missouri, and ended its contracts with Hinkle and other nearby farmers.

Frank Morris/Harvest Public Media
Shawn Hinkle and his wife, Kiley Hinkle, stand outside one of four chicken houses on their farm in southeast Missouri. The barns now stand empty after Tyson closed its facility in Dexter, Missouri, and ended its contracts with Hinkle and other nearby farmers.

The Deal
A decade ago, Shawn Hinkle signed a contract with Tyson Foods to supply fertile eggs to Tyson’s hatchery in Dexter, Missouri.

Tyson promised game-changing income, on a simple proposition: Hinkle was responsible for the land, labor, buildings, and machinery, while Tyson would provide tens of thousands of hens and roosters to Hinkle’s farm, ample feed and it would pick up the eggs and truck them back to Dexter.

Hinkle borrowed more than $2.5 million to build the chicken houses and equip them with Tyson-specified generators, fans and egg-gathering equipment. He committed to feeding all the birds twice a day, seven days a week, at times dictated by Tyson Foods, hiring staff and enlisting family to collect and hand pack tens of thousands of eggs a week.

“There’s been many a time where we’d spend 14, 16, 18 hours a day making sure things were going as best as they possibly can,” said Hinkle.

Over time, Hinkle said Tyson began to skimp on the number and quality of birds it delivered to his farm and the quality of the feed began to slip. Problems like these cut into his earnings, but he said there was nothing he could do about it.

“It was always our fault. Always. And that's just the relationship that you have,” said Hinkle. “You do the best you can with what you've been given. And a lot of the times what you've been given is not up to par.”

Tyson pioneered the system of “vertical integration” in the chicken business. It’s been a runaway success in terms of production efficiency and has been widely adopted across the industry, transforming the nation’s poultry farming. U.S. chicken meat production has climbed by almost 600% in half a century, with a lot fewer farmers involved. But, Kansas City lawyer Brandon Boulware says the vertical integration is a hardship for the farmers involved.

“These farmers essentially become sharecroppers on their own land,” Boulware said. “Tyson controls every aspect of the grow process. And there’s only one company that’s going to pay him for the chickens, and that’s Tyson.”

That was especially true in southeast Missouri. Tyson’s Dexter, Missouri, complex was the only chicken processing plant in the region, and Tyson was the only company farmers like Hinkle had to do business with.

And then, suddenly, last August, Tyson closed the Dexter plant.

“Monday morning at 7 o’clock, we get a phone call from our tech. And the tech says we’re shutting everything down,” recalled Hinkle. “Ok, what do we do now?”

The dilemma
Hinkle didn’t have any good options. Tyson sold the Dexter complex to Cal-Maine Foods, a company that produces table eggs. Tyson didn’t grant an interview for this story but did provide a written statement, which said the sale was part of an efficiency push.

"Closing plants is always a difficult decision,” the statement said. “In the case of the Dexter facility, the size and age of the plant made it inefficient to operate and prohibitively costly to improve.”

Cal-Maine, the nation's largest egg producer, bought the Tyson plant in Dexter. KFVS-TV in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, reported on the then potential sale in December 2023.
KFVS-TV

Cal-Maine, the nation's largest egg producer, bought the Tyson plant in Dexter. KFVS-TV in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, reported on the then potential sale in December 2023.

That explanation makes sense to Jada Thompson, an agricultural economist at the University of Arkansas. Old plants like the one Tyson had in Dexter are far more expensive to operate than new, larger, and much more automated facilities, she said. New plants need far fewer employees and they can also attract millions of dollars in tax incentives from local governments.

The margins in the chicken business are razor thin, Thompson said, and in order for companies like Tyson to stay profitable, they must continually sharpen efficiencies.

“This is just a matter of competition in the marketplace,” Thompson said.

Farmers such as Hinkle were vulnerable all along, according to Thompson, because Tyson was the only chicken company in the region.

It’s not feasible to transport live chickens for more than an hour or so between the hatchery and the farm and the processing plant. Most chicken farming is done within range of at least two processors, so that if any one plant closes the farmers supplying it may be able to go to work for one of the other processing companies in the area.

Thompson said bankers are increasingly hesitant to loan money to chicken farmers that aren’t in range of at least two processors or haven’t locked in lengthy contracts with processing companies.

“I think that there's an industry shift that's happening. And I think specifically because a lot of these plants have been closing, I think lenders are asking now for longer-term contracts, said Thompson.

Meanwhile, Tyson said it has worked to support employees and growers following the closure. The company that bought the operation in Dexter sells table eggs — something Tyson points to as a positive.

“Fortunately, we were able to reach an agreement to sell the Dexter facility to another food company, Cal-Maine,” Tyson’s statement said. “This sale supports the Dexter community by providing new employment opportunities for former Tyson team members and new growing opportunities for local farmers who previously worked with us.''

So Hinkle could, in theory, negotiate a contract with Cal-Maine.

Yet remodeling his chicken houses to meet Cal-Maine’s specifications, which HInkle said are very different than Tyson’s, would drive him deeper into debt.

The lawsuits
Tyson quickly reached agreements with most of the farmers that supplied the company’s Dexter complex, paying them undisclosed amounts in return for not suing the company.

Hinkle says he never got an offer. He decided to sue, basically for breach of contract, along with two other farmers.

“But what we've seen is it's morphed into something larger,” said Boulware, the attorney who’s representing the farmers.

In researching the initial lawsuit Boulware discovered that Tyson took pains to make sure that if it wasn’t processing chickens in at its plant in Dexter, nobody would.

“When they sold the plant to a non-competitor, a company that doesn’t process chickens, that sale came with a restrictive use on the property for 25 years,” he said.

That precondition, contained in the sale agreements, underpins a second-class action lawsuit.

“Our allegation is that Tyson closed these plants, simply to reduce supply with the goal of increasing the price of chicken,” said Boulware.

Attorney Brandon Boulware stands in the lobby of his office building, the historic Livestock Exchange Building in Kansas City. Boulware represents three chicken farmers who are suing Tyson alleging breach of contract.

Harvest Public Media
Attorney Brandon Boulware stands in the lobby of his office building, the historic Livestock Exchange Building in Kansas City. Boulware represents three chicken farmers who are suing Tyson alleging breach of contract.

It’s an allegation that has caught the attention of some powerful people. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, sent an open letter to Tyson demanding that the company disclose terms of the real estate agreement that has been shielded from public disclosure.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, also a Republican, said he’ll support Boulware’s lawsuit.

Back at the Hinkles’ farm, Ken Hinkle has more time on his hands. He enjoys feeding his two pigs, Ham and Biscuit, the only two farm animals on the grounds of the vast chicken houses that once held tens of thousands of birds. The pigs seem to like him, and he clearly enjoys working with them. But Hinkle sees the big empty buildings, and what he considers broken promises as unfinished business with Tyson Foods.

“Hey, what’s right’s right and what’s wrong’s wrong,” he said. “My family has always been fighters. Like in this situation here, we may or may not win, but by the same token, we gonna fight.”

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

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News Tysonchicken Harvest Public Media Harvest Sharefarming

Frank Morris
I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.

© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
About KCUR

 

https://www.kcur.org/news/2024-09-17/tyson-lawsuit-chicken-farmers-closed-missouri-plant

Rudy Arredondo
Founder/Director 
Latino Farmers & Ranchers International, Inc.
Mobile: (301) 366-8200
Email: latinofarmers@gmail.com

Funding Opportunities: September 19, 2024

 

Funding Opportunities

 

The United Nations Office for Project Services has launched a call for proposals for an enterprise program for small and medium enterprises operating in urban sanitation in East Africa through October 10, 2024.   D-Prize is looking for entrepreneurs launching new nonprofit or social ventures in any low-or-middle income country where extreme poverty still exists through October 13, 2024.   The Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research (ZIWR) acknowledges the outstanding achievements and global impact of an individual or organization in the broader field of water. Nominations are open until December 1, 2024.   AJA Foundation supports projects that provide access to clean water in rural Africa. The Foundation accepts (Letters of Intent) LOIs on a rolling basis.