In case you missed it last week, Tyson Foods, owner of IBP and other meat processors admitted dumping.  Here's the article.


Tyson pleads guilty to wastewater dumping at Missouri plant
         	
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Tyson Foods Inc. pleaded guilty Wednesday to violating the federal Clean Water Act and agreed to pay $7.5 million in fines for dumping untreated wastewater from its central Missouri chicken processing plant.

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

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.

Tyson 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.

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

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, an attorney with the Justice Department's environmental crimes section.

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

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see:
 http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp