Gordon Food Services, Glazier Foods, Target Corp., Quality Supply Chain Co-op and BJs Wholesale Club Inc. have filed a lawsuit in New York accusing Cargill Inc., JBS S.A., National Beef Packing Co. and Tyson Foods Inc. of price-fixing the beef market.
They claim the four largest beef packers conspired to “fix, raise, stabilize and/or maintain the price of beef” sold to retailers since 2015.
It is similar to lawsuits filed in North Carolina and Illinois, both of them now transferred to the Minnesota District Court to be consolidated.
All of those lawsuits resemble previous litigation against beef packers that garnered settlements in the tens of millions of dollars, at the same time that the Department of Justice and Congress scrutinized their practices, reports Meatingplace Magazine.
The New York lawsuits also accuse several operating affiliates of the four processors of participating in the alleged violations of the Sherman Act through “anticompetitive means” concerning the price of boxed and case-ready meat.
The four defendants sold approximately 80 per cent of the more than 25 million pounds of fresh and frozen beef sold in the U.S. market in 2018 alone, each of the similar suits claims.
