A group of small food distributors has filed a new lawsuit accusing the nation’s four largest beef packers of fixing prices for years.
They said that going back to at least Jan. 1, 2015, Cargill, JBS USA, Tyson Foods, and National Beef Packing Co. used their market power by conspiring to limit the supply of beef sold to purchasers and to inflate prices. They said the prie-fixing continued the end of 2021.
The big four packers account for about 80 per cent of the beef in the U.S.
The lawsuit resembles previous ones that were settled out of court for millions of dollars.
The new complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, home to ongoing litigation also accusing the nation’s largest chicken processors of colluding to fix prices.
