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Tyson, HSUS spar over connection to video
Story Date: 5/10/2012
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Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 5/9/12
Tyson Foods Inc. and the Humane Society of the United States spent Tuesday afternoon in a communications sparring match over how, or whether, the company portrayed in the undercover video that HSUS unveiled yesterday is connected to the Arkansas processor.
HSUS identified Wyoming Premium Farms, whose workers are seen in the video abusing sows and piglets, as a supplier of animals to Tyson Foods. In two emails sent to Meatingplace, HSUS offered documentation that it said showed that a Tyson subsidiary, Heinold Markets, had bought sows directly from Wyoming Premium in April. “[T]he connection between this investigation and Tyson Foods is crystal clear,” said an email from Matthew Prescott, HSUS’s Food Policy Director.
A statement from Tyson spokesman Worth Sparkman does say that the company has a “small, but separate hog buying business that buys aged sows,” which HSUS says is Heinold but that Tyson does not name. A key point from Tyson’s perspective is that “these animals are subsequently sold to other companies and are not used in Tyson’s pork processing business.”
“Contrary to the impression left by HSUS, there is no connection between this Wyoming farm and the pork that we process. Tyson Foods does not buy any of the hogs raised on this farm for our pork processing plants. … Virtually all of the hogs Tyson buys for our processing plants come from thousands of independent farm families who use both individual and group housing,” the Tyson statement says.
For its part, HSUS makes no specific claim that the hogs Heinold purchased in April were meant for Tyson’s processing facilities, although the group’s original press release says, “These findings highlight the urgent need for reform in the pork industry, especially by Tyson Foods, which has failed to take steps toward reforming cruel practices.”
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