Springdale, Arkansas-based meat behemoth Tyson Foods is facing legal action as a group of pork producers gathered to sue the company for cancelling contracts as it restructures its live swine operations.
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The company admitted in a statement: “We are extremely disappointed to hear some of our pork producers have decided to use the legal system and self-serving out of state plaintiff’s attorneys to address their concerns.
“It is unfortunate that in today’s litigious environment, plaintiff’s lawyers are able to so easily interject themselves into normal business processes before they are allowed to be productively resolved to the mutual benefit of all parties.”
Tyson Foods explained that the move to restructure its live swine operations was essential: “Our live swine business lost about US$23m in the Q3 of this year alone and continues to have negative results.”
In planning the restructure, Tyson said that its representatives met with the affected contract producers and presented a proposal “we believed satisfied our obligations under existing contracts. As part of these meetings, we also sought and received input from producers and elected to revise our closure proposal and shared it with the affected producers over the last few days. This revised proposal addresses most of the concerns expressed in these producer meetings, and has been agreed upon by a number of them.
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By GlobalData“We had hoped to resolve the concerns of the producers quickly and to the mutual benefit of all parties. Now that the plaintiffs’ attorneys have unfortunately inserted themselves into the process, it will be more difficult, and could take as long as several years to resolve.”
