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Harvest Public Media is a reporting collaboration focused on issues of food, fuel and field. Based at KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri, Harvest covers agriculture-related topics through a network of reporters and partner stations throughout the Midwest.

Tyson Pleads Guilty To Environmental Violations, Pays $2.5 Million In Fines And Restitution

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flickr Creative Commons

A Tyson chicken processing plant in southwest Missouri was fined $2.5 million on Wednesday in a pollution case.

Dating back to 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency has found violations at Tyson’s Monett plant and deemed it a “significant non-complier” in cleaning up the problems.

In the latest case, the company pleaded guilty in federal court to discharging an animal feed ingredient that killed more than 100,000 fish in a nearby stream.

In 2015, Tyson paid the state a half-million dollars for that same fish kill. Tyson issued a statement saying it was “an unfortunate mistake” that it deeply regretted. The company also agreed to corrective action.

Peggy Lowe joined Harvest Public Media in 2011, returning to the Midwest after 22 years as a journalist in Denver and Southern California. Most recently she was at The Orange County Register, where she was a multimedia producer and writer. In Denver she worked for The Associated Press, The Denver Post and the late, great Rocky Mountain News. She was on the Denver Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Columbine. Peggy was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2008-09. She is from O'Neill, the Irish Capital of Nebraska, and now lives in Kansas City. Based at KCUR, Peggy is the analyst for The Harvest Network and often reports for Harvest Public Media.