Tyson Foods CEO John H. Tyson speaks to employees in 2002.
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Tyson Foods owns brands including Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Farm, producing roughly 20% of America's beef, chicken, and pork.
The Arkansas-based company made $53.6 billion in sales last year and has been family-run for generations.
Chairman John H. Tyson and his family are worth $2.5 billion, making the Tysons one of the country's wealthiest families.
Tyson Foods is one of the top four meat companies in the US, selling one out of every five pounds of beef, pork, and chicken eaten by American consumers.
The company has been family-run ever since it was founded in 1931, with chairman John H. Tyson — grandson of founder John W. Tyson — and his relatives controlling a majority of the company's stock. The Tysons are worth $2.5 billion, per Forbes.
Here's a look at the massive beef, pork, and poultry company and the billionaire family behind it.
Katie Warren contributed to an earlier version of this article.
Tyson Foods is an Arkansas-based meat company that produces about one fifth of the meat consumed in the US. Among the brands that Tyson owns are Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, and Aidells.
Tyson Foods brands include Jimmy Dean sausages, Ball Park hot dogs and Tyson chicken strips. Tyson processes chicken, beef and pork products.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The business has been family-run through four generations, making the Tyson family one of the wealthiest in the US. Their combined net worth is more than $2.5 billion.
The company's origins trace back to the Great Depression, when in 1931 John W. Tyson started a business delivering chickens around the Midwest.
Tyson Foods
By the 1940s, demand for poultry had grown, and Tyson moved into raising chicks and grinding feed for local chicken farmers, incorporating his business as Tyson Feed and Hatchery Inc.
Tyson Foods
In 1952, John W. Tyson's son, Don Tyson, joined the company as a general manager right out of college. The company opened its first processing plant six years later in Arkansas at a cost of $90,000.
Tyson Foods
The company went public as Tyson Foods in 1963 and began a series of acquisitions. In 1966, Don became president of the company before taking over his father's role a year later as chairman and CEO.
Tyson Foods
Tyson Foods continued to grow throughout the '70s and '80s, moving into new corporate offices and acquiring companies such as Mexican Original, a flour and corn tortilla company. Between 1984 and 1989, the company doubled in size.
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In the late '90s, Don Tyson retired, and his son, John H. Tyson, took over as chairman of the board, becoming the third generation of Tysons to lead the company. He was named CEO in 2000.
John H. Tyson in 2001.
AP Photo/Pat Crowe II
As CEO from 2000 to 2009, John H. Tyson oversaw Tyson Foods' $4.6 billion acquisition of meatpacking company IBP Inc., as well as the construction of a company "innovation center." Although he stepped down as CEO in 2009, Tyson remained chairman of the board — a role he still holds to this day.
John Tyson, then-CEO of Tyson Foods, at a food summit in Chicago in 2005.
Reuters
According to Tyson Foods, Don Tyson remained on the board of directors and stayed active in the company for many years until his death in January 2011 at age 80.
don tyson 1991
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The company made headlines in 2020 during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic due to outbreaks at some of its US meat processing plants, though the company said the "vast majority" of facilities across the US had no cases.
A Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Indiana.
Michael Conroy/AP Photo
The family connections go beyond John H. Tyson's father and grandfather — his aunt, Barbara Tyson, also sits on the company's board of directors following a career with the company as a director and vice president.
Tyson Foods
The fourth generation of the family, John R. Tyson, joined the C-suite as chief sustainability officer in 2019, and has since been promoted to chief financial officer. He is presumed to be next in line for the chairmanship of the company.
Earlier this year, the younger Tyson pleaded guilty to charges of public intoxication and criminal trespassing, after he allegedly was found asleep in the bed of a woman who didn't know him. He paid the requisite fines and apologized to Tyson's investors and employees.
Rising costs for wages, grain, and livestock led Tyson to raise prices in 2022, which also boosted its profits. But shoppers appear to be pushing back, causing prices to slide. In March, the company announced two plant closings and in April, it announced corporate layoffs. A month later, Tyson surprised investors with its first quarterly loss in 14 years.
In June 2023, the company confirmed that it would lay off 262 workers in South Dakota who declined to relocate to its headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas. Two months later, the company said it would close four chicken plants in Arkansas, Indiana and Missouri, cutting some 3,000 jobs.
"We are in this kind of special moment of facing headwinds in chicken, pork and beef segment," CFO John R. Tyson told investors in August. "The recovery timeline in each of those is different."
