Tyson Audit

Tyson Audit

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
From the Fence Post Your Trusted Source for Ag News & Information, on Dec. 21, 2020, Tyson Foods announced that an internal audit discovered one of their cattle suppliers made misrepresentations about the number of cattle purchased on behalf of the company. Tyson paid the supplier for cattle that they believed had been purchased; however, they never received those cattle. Investigations performed with the help of outside advisers revealed that the misappropriation of company funds caused Tyson to overstate their live cattle inventory by an estimated $285 million as of their 2020 fiscal year ended Oct. 3, 2020.

Tyson has not disclosed the name of the cattle supplier, however anonymous sources told Tri-State Livestock News that the supplier was Easterday Farms located near Pasco, Wash. According to Tyson’s recently filed 8-K form, this supplier represents roughly 2 percent of the total cattle supplied to Tyson’s beef segment for fiscal 2017 through 2020.

As of Dec. 25, 2020, Tyson’s net worth was $23.59 billion, so it comes as no surprise that the company reported that the loss caused by Easterday Farms’ misrepresentations will have no material impact on the company’s financial results from 2017 through 2020. With that being said, Tyson does expect this mistake to impact their financial statements for the first quarter of the next fiscal year. Tyson is currently working with Easterday Farms to recover its lossesTyson’s investigation found “no evidence that the company benefitted from the suppliers unlawful conduct or that anyone at the company tried to alter financial statements to hide the transactions resulting from the supplier’s unlawful acts.”

According to Easterday Farms’ website, the farm is a family run agricultural operation that is diversified with crops and cattle. The operation is known as a grower and packer of conventionally raised onions and potatoes. The farm encompasses 18,000 acres of potatoes, onions, corn and wheat; all grain products produced are used to feed cattle in the Easterday Ranches feedlots.

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