Looking Through Tyson's Entrails

Robert Kenner's film Food Inc. has been widely praised for its in-depth reporting. But might that reporting have been even stronger if Kenner and company had pored over the financial filings of the companies he scrutinized?

Michelle Leder seems to think so. Leder, of footnoted.org, spends her days poring over SEC filings, finding all kinds of information that many news organizations miss. On Friday, she attended a screening of Food Inc. where Kenner took questions. She asked him whether he or his researchers had examined filings, and while she doesn't say so explicitly, the answer apparently was no.

"As most footnoted readers know, Smithfield (SFD), Monsanto (MON), Con-Agra (CAG) and Tyson (TSN) are all publicly traded companies with reams of information available as long as you’re willing to dive in," she wrote. "Because most of the companies were unwilling to respond to Kenner’s inquiries (or appear on camera) while he was working on the film, I suggested that the filings might have been helpful."

Tyson had coincidentally filed its 10K on Monday, and Leder decided to check it out. And, she wrote, "some of these numbers in the filing just blew me away." In the past year, she found, Tyson has expanded in a huge way – 10 new chicken processing plants and many new breeder houses and broiler plants. At the same time, no new facilities for Tyson's beef or pork businesses.

After a poultry glut (in large part willfully caused by Tyson) and plunging retail prices, Tyson apparently sees a bright future for its chicken business. Chicken sales are edging up and Tyson last week named Donnie Smith, head of the company's chicken operations, as its new CEO.

More to the point of the film, Leder discovered "the control some of these companies are able to exert on regulators." Her single data point on this score: Tyson was fined $5.5 million over problems with wastewater at one of its plants in Nebraska, and was able to get it reduced to $2 million.