Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Taking out Tyson

This past spring, Food Truth has been hard at work on two campaigns. 1. We successfully reached our goal of getting fair trade, organic bananas in the dining halls (more on this campaign to come), and 2. we started our campaign against Tyson chicken.

BonAppetit gets its chicken from Tyson, the world's largest meat producer. Tyson's business practices have a number of detrimental effects on animal welfare, the environment, and human rights, which Foodtruther Tayler Owen details in his article that appeared in the Carletonian back in May. Because of these issues, Food Truth has decided to take a stand and call for an end to Carleton's business with Tyson.


Taylor's article caused a bit of a controversy and prompted BonAppetit to investigate Tyson's alleged overuse of antibiotics in their chicken. BonAppetit claims that it "only buys chicken raised without the "non-therapeutic" routine use  of human antibiotics as feed additives."  The article suggests that Tyson's practices do not align with BonAppetit's standards, so Helene York, the Director of the BonAppetit Foundation, investigated. She then wrote a response to Taylor's article which appeared in the May 13th Carletonian, in which she brings up some interesting points. It is really exciting to see Food Truth getting recognition at this level, that our voice can really make a difference, and that BonAppetit is very willing to work with students and address our concerns. This is just the beginning of an exciting campaign that has the potential to create change on a large scale. Way to go, Taylor!