For days, Tyson Foods has been hit with campaigns for boycotts and is losing major investors, all because it is the latest target of conservative misinformation.
To be fair, there are actual valid reasons to dislike Tyson Foods. Last year, the company sparked outrage when horrific footage and statements from former employees surfaced, revealing the company did business with suppliers who tortured and mistreated chickens. For its part, Tyson Foods did cut ties with the supplier and did not directly participate in the animal cruelty. Meanwhile, conservatives have never been outspoken supporters of animal rights, raising curiosity about why they are boycotting the company.
Of course, these targeted conservative-led boycotts rarely come from a reasonable place. Usually, as in the cases of Bud Light, Target, and Nike, all a business needs to do is acknowledge the existence of the LGBTQ+ community to draw conservative ire. The recent outrage against Tyson Foods is because the company offered to hire migrant workers for jobs that no one else had expressed interest in.
Why are conservatives boycotting Tyson Foods?
Backlash against Tyson Foods has been ongoing since March 15, when conservatives began posting false narratives about the company on social media. The initial claim from conservatives was that Tyson Foods fired over 1,000 American workers explicitly so it could replace them all with undocumented immigrants. There is no truth to these outlandish claims, though. Instead, they stem from conservatives’ desperate attempts to link two completely unrelated events within the company.
It is true that Tyson Foods will be laying off 1,276 workers as a result of the company closing a pork plant in Perry, Iowa. The plant is set to close in mid-summer, which is when the layoffs will take effect. Mass layoffs are always devastating, but this one may not have been avoidable given that the pork industry has sustained huge losses since last year, especially in Iowa. It was reported that Iowa pork producers’ losses in 2023 were the worst in 25 years due to rising prices. Additionally, Tyson Foods handled the layoffs better than most major companies by announcing the closure months in advance to give its workers time to job search. It also has been encouraging employees to apply to its other plants in Iowa, as it will continue employing an estimated 9,000 people across the state.
Months before the plant closure, Tyson Foods announced that it was partnering with Tent Partnership for Refugees and had pledged to hire 2,500 refugees over three years. This pledge is actually very helpful, especially in places like Washington and New York City, which have been overwhelmed by an influx of migrants, resulting in overpopulation. At the same time, Tyson Foods has been struggling to fulfill mundane factory jobs at its plants, especially with the current low unemployment rate. Since it first offered unfilled jobs to Americans with little success, it now is offering them to migrants. Although the jobs are unpopular, they will give refugees steady income and access to benefits like healthcare, which could help lower New York City’s record-high homeless shelter population.
Of course, conservatives ignored all the information in the last two paragraphs in favor of their own false narrative, declaring that Tyson Foods fired all the employees at the Iowa plant to open up jobs for undocumented immigrants. Suddenly, news sites began posting that Tyson Foods was hiring 52,000 undocumented immigrants. However, at no point did Tyson Foods ever say it was hiring undocumented immigrants. Additionally, the only number provided for how many refugees it planned to hire was 2,500. It seems the false claims arose with Scripps News, which has since retracted its story for significant factual errors. No one can confirm where the 52,000 number came from. Meanwhile, Tyson Foods issued a statement confirming it requires all its employees to be legally authorized to work in the United States.
Unfortunately, the attempt to stop the misinformation has done little to convince conservatives. A conservative investment fund recently split from the company while condemning the hiring of migrant workers over Americans. It’s unclear what the outrage is after all the initial clearly false statements were officially debunked. Additionally, offering migrants jobs that Americans aren’t applying for in the first place can hardly be seen as special treatment. Of course, none of this matters to conservatives, as this whole thing was never about undocumented immigrants or concern for American jobs.
The only problem that conservatives have is that a company dared to hire a few migrant workers. They would rather the most unpopular jobs in the country go unfilled than learn that a refugee, who is legally authorized to work, has been offered one. The Tyson Foods boycott is nothing more than conservatives jumping at every opportunity to publicly display their xenophobia, racism, and hatred.
(featured image: Gregory Smith / Getty)
