Tyson says, the food supply chain is breaking, here's how they helped break it

“Advertising is based on one thing, happiness, and you know what happiness is...its freedom from fear. Its a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay, you are okay. ”

— Don Draper, Mad Men

On Sunday Tyson Foods took out a full page ad in the New York Times and a number of major publications, so that the Chairman of the Board John Tyson could cover his ass while telling the world that, “the food supply chain is breaking.” It reminds me of a certain fictional ad exec. who took out a full page ad to tell the world that the cigarettes he’s been advertising are bad for you. He types it out at midnight while sucking down heaters, and he knows a good line of BS can go a long way.

TV show Mad Men’s Don Draper crafting his, Why I’m quitting tobacco letter/ad.

It’s not a letter, it’s an ad

The thing to remember when reading the Tyson letter is that it is not a letter to the consumer, it is an advertisement. It was bought and paid for, written with the same intention of other ads, to get you to like the company and buy their products. If Mr. Tyson really wanted to be Don Draper he wouldn’t have used 75% of the ad space to talk about all the wonderful things his company is doing. He would’ve talked about all the mistakes he made leading up to this crisis and tell about how his company will do better going forward.

In the ad he stats, “Farmers across the nation will not have anywhere to sell there livestock to be processed, when they could have fed the nation. Millions of animals- chicken, pigs, and cattle- will be depopulated because of the closure of processing facilities.” What he doesn’t state is that Tyson Foods and the 3 other meat processors that control over 80% of the beef processed in this country are currently under investigation by the USDA for manipulating the cattle market. They are also being sued, by multiple parties for colluding with each other. The lawsuits state that over the past few years Tyson, Cargill, National Beef and JBS have purposely reduced their own ability to process beef. The alleged reason that they have done this is so that they can control the market. If you collude with your competitors to control supply, you can control pricing. You control supply, you control not only what you pay for cattle but also what you get paid for beef.

“Closure of processing facilities” that “could have fed the nation”

Those are John H. Tyson’s words, even though he knows that in the past few years, back when Corona was just a beer, his company along with Cargill, JBS, and National together had closed a total of 12 beef packing plants in small communities that, “could have fed the nation.” According to one lawsuit these closures, “stripped out approximately two million head(of cattle) from the industry’s annual slaughter capacity.”

In 2014 Tyson closed a plant in Cherokee, Iowa. City leaders accused Tyson of holding the town and plant, “hostage” when they refused to break their lease. Tyson refused to sell the plant to any company that would be processing cattle and instead continued to pay their $130,000 a year lease. In 2018 after a long fight with the city of Cherokee, Tyson agreed to sell, but written into the deal was a limit to the amount of cattle that could be processed at the plant for the next 10 years. Cattle that according to Mr. Tyson, now “could have fed the nation.”

“We have a responsibility to feed our country. It is as essential as healthcare. This is a challenge that should not be ignored.”

Again, the words of John H. Tyson’s advertisement. The monopolistic practices of Tyson and others as they have centralized the meat packing industry has been good for their bottom line, but it has been bad for employees, communities, and livestock producers. Now it has turned into a disaster for this nation. Tyson says, “We must come together to keep our nation fed.” Hopefully we can all agree on that. Once this is all over and the smoke clears from the, “depopulated livestock" fixing this problem needs to become the, “challenge that should not be ignored.”