Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was a contender for the nomination as Democratic Party nominee for president, is calling on the Department of Justice to launch a probe into the large chicken processing companies.
She said chicken prices have risen by 24 per cent this year and she wants the department to investigate anti-competitive behaviour by the large companies.
In a letter to Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Warren accused the nation’s dominant poultry companies of conducting “schemes to eliminate small competitors while raising prices for consumers, cutting pay for American farmers and reporting massive profits.”
The letter cited JBS Foods, Perdue Farms, Sanderson Farms and Tyson Foods as controlling 54 per of the U.S. poultry market, allowing the major processors to take advantage of their ability as suppliers to “jack up prices” of the goods they sell, she added.
Significantly missing from her list was Koch Foods, which is close to as large as the other four.
The letter noted that the companies all posted double-digit sales and profit increases so far this fiscal year, while also citing National Chicken Farmers data that the pay scale for U.S. chicken farmers has declined by more than six per cent since 1988.
Warren wants a “broad investigation of price-fixing, wage fixing and consolidation in the poultry industry on consumers and farmers” by Dec. 20.
The four companies — all accused in recent lawsuits alleging conspiracies to fix poultry prices, with several of them settling the suits — have not yet to responded to her request.
