Tyson Foods pleads guilty to violating Clean Water Act

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- After years of continuing violations, Tyson Foods Inc. pleaded guilty Wednesday to 20 federal violations of the Clean Water Act at its Sedalia chicken poultry complex.

The company, the nation's largest meat producer, agreed to pay a $5.5 million fine to the federal government, $1 million to the Missouri Natural Resources Protection Fund and another $1 million to the state to settle a separate civil enforcement action.

The company also will be on probation for three years, will hire an independent consultant to perform an environmental audit and will implement an improved environmental management program.

In the plea agreement, the company admitted that between September 1998 and March 2001 it repeatedly discharged untreated wastewater from its poultry plant into a tributary that empties into the Lamine River. It also acknowledged that employees at the plant knew about the discharges.

The company's state permit, issued under the federal Clean Water Act, requires Tyson to treat the wastewater before discharging it into the stream.

"We regret that these failures occurred," Les Baledge, executive vice president and general counsel for Tyson, told U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs. "We are here today to take responsibility for those failures. You have the company's commitment that it will work hard to make sure they don't recur."

Tyson officials said the company has made significant capital improvements at the Sedalia plant since 2001 to improve its handling of waste discharges and has improved employee training in this area.

State and federal prosecutors alleged that over the last decade Tyson repeatedly ignored civil fines, state orders and other violation notices about its wastewater discharges. The violations continued even after the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency executed search warrants at the plant in 1999, said Jeremy Korzenik, attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's environmental crimes section.

The company repeatedly blamed the problems on inattentive employees or innocent mistakes, Korzenik said. But internal Tyson documents showed that managers "at the highest levels" knew about the violations, he said.

"The government is not making crimes out of innocent mistakes," Korzenik said. "Tyson's violations were not limited to incidents of innocent errors."

He said no individuals were charged because the responsibility for the violations was widespread throughout the company.

In accepting the agreement, Sachs said the government had convinced him that Tyson continued to violate the clean water regulations despite knowing of problems at its wastewater and rendering plants.

He said the fine was "less than impressive" because of Tyson's size and history of violations. But he accepted the deal to end the lengthy case and because the company had agreed to be monitored by an outside auditor.

Sachs also suggested that the U.S. Congress increase fines in such cases.

"If there is a next time for this offense, a much bigger fine would be desirable," the judge said.

Dan Stewart, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District, said the fine was the largest environmental criminal penalty against a corporation in the district's history.

The 1,000-acre Sedalia complex includes a hatchery, feed mill and rendering plant and its own wastewater plant. It processes about 1 million chickens per week and generates hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater a day.

Korzenik said federal and state officials hope the fine and prosecution will send a message to large corporations.

"We want to establish in the minds of large corporations and their managers that there are costs for violating these laws," he said. "There's a cost in the loss of public good will as well."