Agricultural News
HSUS and Pacelle Take Gestation Crate Fight to Tyson Board Room
Tue, 02 Oct 2012 16:51:36 CDT
Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the Unites States has announced he will seek a seat on the board of directors of Tyson Foods. He said his goal is to convince the Springdale, Ark., company to phase out its use of gestation crates. In his bid to change the corporate culture of Tyson, Pacelle has enlisted billionaire corporate heavyweight Carl Icahn to help him get a seat at the table.
"I've been a vegan for 28 years now. So it feels a little strange for me to be running for a slot on the board of directors of Tyson Foods, the second-largest meat company in the world and one of the behemoths of industrialized agribusiness," Pacelle said. "But that's exactly what I announced today. And I did so with the support of a new ally-billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has re-engineered some of the biggest companies in America."
HSUS has been pressuring pork producers to eliminate the use of gestation crates in their operations. Smithfield Foods, Hormel Foods, and Cargill have already begun to phase out individual sow housing or have committed to a timetable to eliminate it.
Pacelle approached Icahn to help him gain a position on the Tyson board, but Icahn said "it would be extremely difficult to elect him as a director through a proxy fight." Still, Icahn elected to throw his considerable weight behind the HSUS bid because, "Eliminating those crates will both prevent cruelty to animals, and will improve Tyson's business prospects by putting the company on an equal competitive footing with the bulk of the industry that is already rejecting gestation crates."
More than 30 companies, including giants such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Sysco, ARAMARK, Sodexo, Costco, Kroger, Safeway, ConAgra Foods, Oscar Mayer, Hillshire Brands, have announced plans to eliminate gestation crates from their pork supply chains.
Icahn said he was "hopeful that enough shareholders will be receptive to the campaign to put Wayne Pacelle on the board so that either he will be elected, or that Tyson will reach the right conclusion and put him on the board without the cost and inconvenience of a proxy fight."
The HSUS has, for the last two years, owned a modest amount of stock in Tyson Foods and regularly urged the company to revamp its policies.
Tyson responded to Pacelle's announcement saying they weren't surprised at the activist's desire to sit on the company's board and that his nomination would be handled according to all applicable laws and the company's bylaws.
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