For those of you following news about BIG MEAT, here is a story you need to read in its entirety at the Tennessee Star (hat tip: Joanne).
Citizens of small town America are beginning to understand that the arrival of a BIG MEAT plant will change their towns forever, and they don’t like it!
We told you about the town of Humboldt, TN welcoming a new Tyson Foods plant promoted by Tennessee governor Haslam and Senator “Little Bob” Corker here in early December, but this is fascinating news.
And, it is so exciting to see investigative reporting at its finest!
Tennessee Star:
The decision by Tyson Foods to open a meat-packing plant in Humboldt, Tennessee, welcomed recently by Gibson County Mayor Tom Witherspoon, came only after the facility was rejected by citizens in Tonganoxie, Kansas. The “big meat” company would have created approximately the same 1,500 jobs there that it says it will bring to rural Gibson County.
[….]
Reuters reported in November 2017 that the decision by Tyson Foods to switch over to Humboldt came only after “the No Tyson in Tongie” citizen-led opposition defeated a proposed Tyson plant in Tonganoxie, Kansas, a town not much smaller than Humboldt. Several Kansas state legislators also committed to opposing the proposed Tyson plant.
Citizen opposition in the “Tongie” area was described as “staggering,” Twilight Greenaway reported at Moyers & Company, the website operated by far left journalist Bill Moyers.
That opposition was fueled in part by the secrecy in which the deal was arranged between Tyson executives and local officials until it was finally made public in September, Greenaway reported:
[Read what he said about the secrecy surrounding the plans for the plant, here]
Greenaway’s accounting of the “No Tyson in Tongie” defeat of Tyson Foods acknowledged that the issue of “new comers” arriving for meat-packing jobs also concerned residents. Greenaway notes that “most meat processing plants are now staffed almost entirely by immigrant and refugee populations from places like Somalia, Latin America and South Asia.”
For any of you concerned about your heartland towns and what BIG MEAT will bring, please read the whole story, here.
“The Jungle” here we come!
See my archive entitled ‘meatpackers’ here.
I also have many posts on Tyson Foods. Don’t miss this one where we learned that Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (one of the nine federal contractors supplying cheap labor to meatpackers) has a sweet deal with Tyson.