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some with tiny chips of eggshell clinging to their down.

Tyson isn’t directly involved in raising livestock; most of

the hogs and cattle slaughtered at its plants are purchased

at feedlots. By contrast, the company’s chicken supply chain

is vertically integrated, meaning Tyson owns its birds from

birth. Eggs are laid by hens at breeder farms, and the chicks

emerge at the company’s hatcheries. The animals are then

raised to processing weight at contract farms, using feed

Tyson supplies.

Hayes has endorsed a sort of animal bill of rights that

espouses “freedom from hunger, thirst, discomfort, pain,

injury, disease, fear and distress, and freedom to express nor-

mal behavior.” Hayes acknowledges that these criteria aren’t

enough for many critics. “Some people are going to hate what

we do, and I appreciate that,” he says. “It’s what makes our

country great. You don’t have to buy our products. You don’t

have to believe it aligns with your ethos. But to the extent that

the animals are under our care, we want to do the right thing,

and we have lots of work to do.” The animals should have

“only one bad day under our care,” adds Justin Whitmore,

Tyson’s new McKinsey & Co.-trained sustainabilityoicer—

the day they become meat.

In hisirst month as CEO, Hayes brought many of Tyson’s

critics—including representatives from the World Resources

Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, the Humane Society,

Oxfam, and the poultry and livestock unions—to Springdale,

to hear their concerns before he and his team crafted Tyson’s

sustainability goals. He later announced plans to improve con-

ditions and safety measures for plant workers, in collabora-

tion with Oxfam and the United Food & Commercial Workers

International Union. He raised wages “by a double-digit per-

centage over three years,” as Hayes puts it. After the Mercy

for Animals videos, Tyson expanded its third-party moni-

toring program, which now tracks animal health and eval-

uates human-animal interaction points using

cameras installed in the company’s chicken

plants. Whitmore also hired a team of53 full-

time “animal well-being specialists” to train

Tyson farmers in better animal care. So custom-

ers can see that its birds are hardy and healthy,

Whitmore is running live video on Facebook

from some chicken farms.

Raising and slaughtering millions of chickens

per week safely without antibiotics is both costly

and logistically challenging, but Scott Gustin, a

Tyson veterinarian who specializes in chick care,

says much of the risk can be mitigated in the irst

hours of a chick’s life with good nutrition, steady

warmth, immune support, and absolute sterility.

Tyson’s poultry scientists revised the practices

for hatcheries and feedlots, replacing antibiotics

with probiotics and developing feeds enhanced

with, of all things, essential oils.

The antibiotic-free program added 3¢ to the

cost of every pound of feed initially—a major investment for a

company that churns out billions of pounds of feed per year.

But Hayes calls the program a success: Feed costs have come

way down since the program began, and less than 1 percent

of the chickens developed for Tyson-brand products have suc-

cumbed to illness. When that happens, they’re treated with

medication and sold without a Tyson-brand label.

Prescott, of the Humane Society, questions Tyson’s sustain-

ability eforts overall. “I’ve seen very little real progress at the

company when it comes to changing its animal welfare poli-

cies or even basic measures to avoid the worst abuses that the

animals in their supply chain sufer,” he says. Tyson’s chickens

grow too big too fast, Prescott adds, which can cause heart fail-

ure and leg injuries. “The University of Arkansas did a study

showing that if a human baby grew at a rate equivalent to these

fast-growth chickens, it would be 660 pounds at the age of

2 months,” he says. (The widely cited 2013 study assumes the

baby was born weighing approximately 6.6 pounds.) Tyson is

also one of the only meat companies that doesn’t have a pol-

icy for eliminating the use of “gestation crates” for hogs, metal

cages only slightly larger than the animal’s body that severely

restrict movement, Prescott says.

Hayes is staunch in his commitment to fast-growth chick-

ens, noting that many small organic farmers raise these

breeds, too: “From a resources standpoint, it means growing

the chicken with half the water, half the feed, half the envi-

ronment impact.” Where the pigs are concerned, Hayes insists

that he’s pushing to reduce the use of gestation crates; he says

that increases production costs, and for now there just isn’t a

42

Bloomberg Businessweek August 20, 2018

“You don’t have to buy

our products”

A Tyson Tastemakers

ready-to-cook meal

prepared at the

Discovery Center