Tyson Foods dumps 87BILLION gallons of toxic waste including cyanide, blood and ... trends now
The sheer scale of the poison flowing into the country's rivers and waterways is starting to emerge after scientists took a look at one of America's biggest meat processors.
Tyson Foods released 87 billion gallons contaminated with cancer-causing cyanide, nitrates, chloride, phosphorous and oil directly from 41 plants into public waters across 17 states between 2018 and 2022.
The toxic water would cover 165 square kilometers to a depth of two meters and fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools every hour.
But the study by the Union of Concerned Scientists looked at just two percent of meat processing plants nationwide leaving the total figure terrifyingly uncertain.
The report's authors slam feeble federal regulation and state houses in the pocket of a 'Big Ag' which can pollute with impunity.
'As a multibillion-dollar company, Tyson can treat even hefty fines and penalties for polluting the environment as simply the cost of conducting business its way,' they wrote. 'This has to change.'
Billionaire John Tyson has chaired the Fortune 100 family firm since 1998 and helped it record a $2.49 billion profit in 2023 from its 123 meat processing plants across the country
The firm's biggest plant in Dakota City was responsible for releasing 8,000 tons of toxic chemicals into the waters between 2018 and 2022
The plant is one of Nebraska's top employers but situated just 500 feet from the Missouri River
'There are over 5,000 meat and poultry processing plants in the United States, but only a fraction are required to report pollution and abide by limits.'
Agriculture consumes more fresh water than any other human activity, and meat processors use nearly a third of that, leaving it awash with toxic chemicals, blood, feces, micro-organisms and pathogens including E. Coli and Enterococcus.
Fifteen states suffer drinking water with higher than permitted levels of nitrates which lead to blood disorders and brain defects in infants, and have been estimated to cause up to 300 cases of cancer a year in Iowa alone.
Half of the contaminants found in the study were dumped into the waters of Missouri, Illinois and Nebraska, including 8,000 tons from Tyson's biggest plant at Dakota City, just 500 feet from the Missouri river.
'This Tyson plant helped put me through college and supports a lot of migrant workers,' Rogelio Rodriguez of Conservation Nebraska told the Guardian.
'But there's a dark side like the water and air pollution that most people don't pay attention to because they're just trying to survive.
'If regulations are lax, corporations have a tendency to push limits to maximize profits, we learnt that during Covid.'
Across Nebraska the firm's five largest plants released more than 55,000 tons of pollutants, including 2,000 tons of nitrates.
Once in the waterways the toxic discharges join the chemical run-off from fields fertilized by the state's highly consolidated agriculture sector and start to make their way downstream.
Algae thrive on the chemical mix, sucking oxygen out of the water, killing fish and creating 'dead zones' all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.
But they also affect the human population, increasing cases of pneumonia, bronchitis, and asthma among people living nearby.
The effect is compounded by the 7,600 tons of bacteria leaving the factories which feast on the oxygen previously available in the rivers and lakes.
'With this biological load compounding the oxygen-depleting effects of its nitrogen and phosphorous pollution, Tyson is truly sucking the life out of aquatic habitats,' the report's authors wrote.
The 90-year-old company sits on the Fortune 100 index and earned $53 billion in 2023, operating brands including Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, and Wright Brand, and supplying outlets including KFC, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Walmart.
Billions of gallons of water are polluted with chemicals and bacteria at Tyson's meat processing plants as they are used in preparing millions of pieces of meat
It was fined $2million in 2018 by the Department of Justice after more than 100,000 fish were killed by a discharge of ammonia at Clear Creek in Missouri, and it paid $3 million to settle a lawsuit in 2021 over the death of 200,000 fish in Alabama's Black Warrior River.
But the fine amounted just 0.006 percent of the $47.05 billion it received in revenue that year.
'Tyson has vast wealth at its disposal, so it can withstand even multimillion-dollar pollution penalties,' the report notes.
Chlorides are corrosive and the
