Dick Bond, the CEO of the world’s largest meat producing company, Tyson, has revealed this week that he is leaving. Considering Tyson’s earnings fell by 68% to $86 million in the last fiscal year, it’s no wonder he decided to leave.  But perhaps there is a more straight forward reason for his sudden resignation. Bond is now 61 and if he eats as much meat as you’d expect the CEO of Tyson to, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a few health issues.

Tyson is not looking healthy either; increased feed prices have taken it’s toll on Tyson and other meat producing companies. It seems Bond still has some faith in the company though, he said “I have a lot of both my time and personal finances invested in Tyson Foods, so I wish the company all the best for future success”. I wonder how long he’ll give it until he moves his investments elsewhere.

Bond has made some unpopular decisions of late. The US Agriculture Department has forecast a chicken production reduction of 1.3% for 2009 and many chicken producers are reducing their production.  However, Tyson has been over producing chicken. Market analyst Timothy Ramey said “We were disturbed by the way Mr. Bond seemed unconcerned with his risky strategy of continuing to overproduce poultry”.

Tyson favour the industrialised farming of animals, especially chicken.  The chicken are fed a diet of soy and other grains, resulting in the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest as well as abuses human rights.  To produce such a damaging ‘product’ is immoral, and even more so if you are deliberately increasing production when you know the demand for it is decreasing.

It’s not a great week for Tyson. Also this week they were ordered to pay a fine of $500,000 after willfully violating worker safety regulations which resulted in the death of an employee.

Tyson are an unethical and unsustainable company, responsible for environmental destruction, animal cruelty and human rights abuses. They are the biggest meat producing company in the world, their products sold in fast food chains, restaurants and supermarkets. But we can stop them. If we don’t eat meat, they have no reason to exist.

Ugandan livestock farmers, concentrated along ‘the cattle corridor’ which runs southwest to northeast across Uganda, are already in conflict due to water scarcity and this will be exacerbated by increased demand and climate change. Oxfam’s recent report ‘Climate Change and Poverty in Uganda’ reveals that:-

“People in Uganda, whose contribution to global warming has been minuscule, are feeling the impacts of climate change first and worst. On the one hand there is more erratic rainfall in the March to June rainy season, bringing drought and reductions in crop yields and plant varieties; on the other hand, the rainfall, especially in the later rains towards the end of the year, is reported as coming in downpours that are more intense and destructive, bringing floods, landslides, and soil erosion”.

Livestock farmers are already being forced to move their animals great distances to find pasture and water, increasing the conflict between them as they encroach on to each others territories.

Renowned British environmentalist Norman Myers coined the phrase ‘the hamburger connection’ in the 1980s to describe how the rapid growth in beef exports in Central America to fast food chains is the US was driving deforestation. Since then we have seen massive destruction of the Amazon for cattle ranching and now the largest meat producer in the world, Tyson, has ambitious plans to enter countries such as Brazil, China and India to introduce and profit from the industrialistion of meat production in those countries.

There is no question that Uganda needs to overcome poverty, but developing a meat export market is not the answer. We have already seen the result of meat exportation in Brazil and other developing countries which has only resulted in further environmental destruction, conflict, poverty and hunger. Forty per cent of children’s deaths in Uganda are caused by malnutrition; they need the resources to feed their own people, not to fulfil the desire for meat in rich nations. If Norway really wanted to make a difference to people in Uganda, and didn’t actually have an alterior motive, that’s what they’d help them to do.

The world’s largest meat company, Tyson Foods, has reported a massive 92% fall in earnings. They earned $9 million in the 3 months ending June 30 2008, down from $111 million in the same quarter last year. Tyson said it paid $140 million more for grain during the quarter to feed its chickens compared to a year ago. Tyson’s beef unit, its largest unit, earned $3 million versus $36 million a year ago.

I hope they are not expecting anyone to feel sorry for them. Tyson is certainly a company our world would be much better without. Take a look at their website if you want a great example of corporate bullsh*t. ‘Tyson cares about the environment’ they say. Let’s think about that a minute. As the recent dramatic fall in profits show, this company relies upon huge amounts of soy to feed it’s animals, the very same soy that is destroying our rainforests and causing climate change. How dare they claim to care about the environment when they are instrumental in it’s destruction?

Even more laughbable is their claim that ‘the primary philanthropic focus for Tyson Foods is hunger relief. As of February, 2008, Tyson had donated more than 50 million pounds of Tyson products to hunger and disaster relief efforts since the year 2000′. So, they are sending their products to poverty stricken areas; areas such as Latin America perhaps where agribusiness has wiped out local farming and destroyed forests to make way for soy to feed Tyson’s chickens, causing the very same poverty and hunger Tyson would have us believe they aim to alleviate. Well, that’s real big of them.

On the bright side, this massive fall in profits is very positive for our planet, animals and people. Long may it continue.

Many people talk about the increased demand for meat from China, India and other nations - whose taste for meat is growing in line with their increased wealth - but seldom do people think about where all this meat will come from.

This week James Rice, chief of China operations for Tyson Foods, the world’s biggest meat producer, explained that increased consumption of meat can only lead to less sustainability, he said “this is the end of self-sufficiency for China, this year will be the last in which China produces enough corn for itself, and the last that it is self-sufficient in protein.” He predicts China will be importing $4.5bn (£2.27bn) worth of protein by 2010.

This is all great news for the meat industry, as channels are opened for them to export more meat to those countries who cannot produce enough to keep up with demand.

The reality is, more demand for meat means more export, more land and crops diverted to feed animals, more transportation, more energy for refrigeration during shipping and thus more greenhouses gases and more abuse of the poor. But before we start pointing fingers at China and India, let’s first look at our own habits and lead by example. Go vegan.