Four states joined the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in a lawsuit against the agricultural data company Agri Stats in an amended complaint filed in a Minnesota Federal court.
Attorneys general for California, Minnesota, North Carolina and Tennessee were added to the list of plaintiffs to a civil suit originally filed in September.
The complaint alleges Agri Stats organized and managed “anticompetitive information exchanges among broiler chicken, pork and turkey processors,” and collected, integrated and distributed “competitively sensitive information related to price, cost and output among competing meat processors” to the harm of customers and retail outlets.
“A big reason why our paychecks aren’t covering as much as they used to is because corporate profiteers are manipulating markets to line their pockets and stifle competition,” said Minnesota Attporney General Keigh Ellison.
“Agri Stats’ illegal information sharing makes it harder for people to afford their lives by helping big meat processors coordinate with one another to keep food prices artificially high,” he said in a prepared statement.
