America's Biggest Meat Producer Averages One Amputation Per Month

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One year ago, a sanitation worker at a meat-processing plant in Missouri lost both his hands in a work-related accident. Two months later, a worker amputated part of his right thumb while running flat steaks over a skinner (a blade that removes the outer layer of meat) in an Amarillo, Texas factory.

"Skinners. Band saws. Wing saws. Hide grippers. The names of these tools tell just part of the story of why these amputations occurred," wrote Celeste Monforton, a professor of occupational health at George Washington University.

Monforton was referring to the kind of machines that caused 34 injuries at 10 meatpacking plants run by Tyson Foods in the first nine months of 2015 — for an average of one amputation per month.

Monforton compiled a full tally of the amputations, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request:

Celeste Monforton, via OSHA / Via scienceblogs.com

Iowa Public Radio first covered Monforton's findings. The details are available thanks to a new Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA) regulation requiring that all work-related incidents resulting in an amputation or hospitalization be reported within 24 hours.

"We don’t want anyone hurt on the job," a Tyson spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in an email. "We’re continually focused on improving workplace safety and preventing accidents for all of our 113,000 team members."

Data from OSHA has long been considered inaccurate due to under-reporting by workers and employers, as noted in a report by Oxfam America last year and a Government Accountability Office study from 2009. While plants must report the number of days taken off by workers due to injuries, Monforton told BuzzFeed News in October that plants sometimes keep injured workers on site, sitting idly in offices, to avoid having to record the time off.

The Oxfam America report implicated all four of the country's largest chicken producers in unsafe workplace conditions leading to avoidable repetitive motion injuries and grisly amputations.

Regis Duvignau / Reuters

Tyson is America's biggest meat producer, and each week it processes 35 million chickens, 400,000 hog, and 128,000 cattle. The full tally of amputations at its facilities is likely higher than the number obtained by Monforton, which does not include information from Tyson factories in 10 states that run their own OSHA programs.

The Tyson spokesperson said that "almost 500 health and safety professionals work in our 100 or so locations. We have plant safety committees that involve management and hourly workers and provide safety training in multiple languages."

The company also recently launched new programs to improve workplace safety communication, awareness and education.

"Now more than ever, we’re stressing awareness about surroundings within the workplace and helping shape appropriate safe behavior for our team at all locations," he said. "We’re constantly reviewing equipment design and our processes to reduce risks throughout our company."

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Here's Another Reminder Of How Rigged The Stock Market Can Be

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For the dwindling number of mom-and-pop investors still active in the stock market, an analyst with a big-name investment bank issuing a "buy" rating on a stock implies that, maybe, it's time to buy that stock. But an order from the SEC today illustrates, yet again, how rigged the system can be in favor of hedge funds and big investors.

A former Deutsche Bank analyst was charged by the SEC for telling some hedge fund clients to sell shares of discount retailer Big Lots, in 2012, while publicly maintaining a "buy" rating on the stock to stay on good terms with company management. Chuck Grom, the analyst, agreed to pay a $100,000 penalty to settle charges and will be suspended from the securities industry for a year, according to a statement.

Analysts like Grom study the financial state of companies, and try to get regular access to top management to better understand the business. They produce research notes and recommendations for their clients, which are often spread widely through the investment community and financial media.

Wednesday's SEC order underscores the pressure on such analysts to provide special access and information on companies to preferred clients, and how this has watered down the meaning of "buy" and "sell" ratings on stocks in recent years.

Here's how this particular incident went down: Grom and Deutsche Bank hosted a day of meetings between their clients and Big Lots' CEO and senior vice president of finance on March 28, 2012, according to the SEC. Comments there made Grom, who had a "buy" rating on the stock, believe sales would grow by less than he previously expected.

Later that day, he had phone calls with four unnamed hedge funds, who collectively sold almost $40 million worth of Big Lots shares after talking with him, as per the order.

Despite all that, Grom reiterated his "buy" rating on Big Lots in a report published the next day. He told Deutsche Bank research and salespeople on a call that morning that he maintained the "buy" recommendation because "we just had them in town so it's not kosher to downgrade on the heels of something like that," the SEC said.

After Big Lots reported disappointing earnings the next month, he allegedly said on a separate call, "I think the writing was on the wall [that] we were getting concerned about it, but I was trying to maintain, you know, my relationship with them. So, that's why we didn't downgrade it a couple of weeks back."

The SEC said he made a similar comment in response to a compliment from the Deutsche salesperson who worked with one of the hedge funds that sold shares based on his information.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

Big Lots / Via biglots.com

The SEC said the comments showed Grom violated the legal duty of analysts to "issue research reports that accurately reflect their personally-held views." As part of the settlement, Grom didn't admit or deny the SEC's findings. He was fired from Deutsche in February 2013 for "conduct not consistent with firm standards," as per the SEC's order, and was most recently an analyst at Sterne Agee. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

While the SEC said such violations "undermine public confidence in the integrity" of analyst research, it's not clear how intact that integrity is.

"Sell" ratings are on the decline as stock analysts fear upsetting colleagues in other parts of a bank and losing access to the companies in question, according to the Financial Times. What you'll see more often is analysts telling executives, "great quarter, guys," even when it wasn't really, as Bloomberg News wrote last year.

The Wall Street Journal has outlined how analysts and brokers are expected to arrange special access to company executives for certain investors, and the benefits provided by such meetings.

That role was reinforced in the SEC's order today. Deutsche Bank's performance evaluation system for stock research analysts "assigned significant weight to an analyst’s access to and relationships with the senior management of the companies they covered and the feedback that the firm received from its clients," the SEC wrote.

Almost 10% of an analyst's internal performance rating was tied to "the frequency and level of contact that the analyst was able to arrange for firm clients with management from the companies they covered," according to the order. Analysts got extra credit for "arranging contact" with CEOs and CFOs.

“When research analysts tell clients to buy or sell a particular security, the rules require them to actually mean what they say," said Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC's enforcement division, said in today's statement. "Analysts simply cannot express one view publicly and the opposite view privately."

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Why Walgreens Got The Exclusive On Hot Dog–Flavored Pringles

Venessa Wong / BuzzFeed News

You may have never thought you wanted a hot dog-flavored chip, but Pringles is betting you're either curious enough or powerless enough to give it a try. Early last month, the "Hot Diggity Dog" went on sale, available exclusively at Walgreens.

The new limited-time chip tastes less like a hot dog and more a medley of smoke and mustard. In the words of Pringles Marketing Director Mark Miller, it delivers "on that great taste and complex taste that comes back from a hot dog, between the mustard and spices, on the iconic asset of the Pringles chip."

So why can you only get it at a Walgreens?

This isn't the first time a weird Pringle has been sold exclusively in one place. Cheeseburger-flavored Pringles hit Walmart in 2012, Philly Cheesesteak ones went to Dollar General in 2014, and Bourbon BBQ Chicken Pringles were in Target last year.

Miller told BuzzFeed News that programs like the exclusive flavor deals it strikes with retailers "are the reason that Pringles is a growing business."

The point of all these limited-time launches is to bait consumers into trying something new, even if they weren't looking to buy Pringles at all. In return for the exclusive, a retailer like Walgreeens will create a display of the new flavor somewhere prominent but separate from the regular snack aisle (for example near the register), hoping consumers will throw in a can as an impulse purchase, as they might do with candy or lip balm.

It's a bit like the Pringle equivalent of the clickbait headlines you see all over the internet — an attention-grabber, carefully calibrated to be irresistible to the passer-by, even if the underlying product may not be one for the ages.

Delicious, irresistible clickbait:

Via look.checkthisyo.com

"It’s like, hey, I’m just walking into a store, didn’t plan on buying Pringles and clearly didn’t plan on buying Pringles Hot Diggity Dog, but boy this looks really interesting and at a pretty cool price of less than $2 I can pick up something and try something new at a very low entry price point,” explained Miller.

By making it exclusive to the retailer, the hope is the product will have a bigger impact on that particular chain's sales than if it were available everywhere.

Pringles have been a bright spot for owner Kellogg, which acquired the brand from Procter & Gamble in 2012. Americans have been eating less cereal, a trend that has been dragging down Kellogg's overall sales. Yet the company said in its 2014 annual report that it saw "good performance from the Pringles brand in 2014, both in the U.S. and around the world."

In Kellogg's earnings call last week, it said Pringles "delivered another strong year of growth across the globe" in 2015. Kellogg's overall net sales decreased by 7.2% in 2015 to $13.5 billion.

According to data from IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm, dollar sales of Pringles in U.S. supermarkets, drugstores, convenience stores, select club and dollar chains, and other retailers increased by nearly 1.5% last year to more than $844.2 million. In 2014, sales had grown by 5.2% (IRI's data does not include Walgreen stores.)

The odd flavors come from something Pringles calls its "Flavor Bank," a catalog of more than 100 flavors that its salesforce takes to clients. It contains categories like meaty blends (this would include Hot Diggity Dog and bacon flavored Pringles), hot and spicy, and sweet and salty. Miller called the Flavor Bank “a source of competitive advantage" for the company.

Pringles went to Walgreeens with a variety of potential exclusive flavors it could make for the retailer, and they settled on the mustardy hot dog option. "They were absolutely blown away by it," Miller said.

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Hershey’s Kisses Carrot Cake Candies Are Here And People Are Losing Their Minds

Yuck or yum?

Hershey's confirmed to BuzzFeed News on Tuesday that it has released a brand new Kisses flavor — carrot cake.

The Hershey Company

"Easter season, you think about carrots. You think about bunnies," Hershey's spokesperson Lauren Aardewijn told BuzzFeed News. "There is nothing more symbolic than carrot cake."

The Kisses "honestly taste just like carrot cake," said Aardewjin. They are "smooth" with a "light cream cheese-like filling in the center."

Via i.imgur.com

Hershey's Kisses Carrot Cake candies available exclusively at Wal-Mart stores in 9 oz. bags through the Easter season or while products last, said Aardewijn.

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