The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has put AgriStats at the center of price-fixing cases in the chicken, turkey, pork and beef industries.
Since 1985 the company has gathered information from the largest processors in those commodities, compiled reports containing the information it gathered and sold it back to the companies but stripped of the company identifications.
Since at least the early 1970s, A.C. Nielson company has done the same for the Canadian grocery business.
The government filed charges in a Minnesota federal court, portraying Agri Stats not as a peripheral player but as a central architect of information-sharing systems that, prosecutors say, suppressed competition across the chicken, pork and turkey sectors.
The company has disputed the claims In a statement posted to its website the day the DOJ filed suit, the company said its benchmarking services have “played a vital role in the United States economy” since 1985, helping protein producers identify efficiencies, innovate, and provide “more chicken, pork, and turkey to consumers for less money.”
The company said the DOJ lawsuit “turns the antitrust laws on their head” and ignores a prior two-year DOJ investigation that closed in 2012 without action.
The DOJ lawsuit against Agri Stats comes against the backdrop of years of sprawling civil litigation that has touched nearly every major U.S. poultry processor — and many in pork and beef as well. As much a threat to Agri Stats’ business model, the outcome has implications for the entire industry’s ability to share information.
Either way, it all comes at a cost. Since 2016, more than $4 billion in settlements have been paid to resolve claims that companies conspired to limit supply and raise prices.
Meatingplace Magazine lists the most notable settlements as:
· Pilgrim’s Pride (2021) — Paid $75 million to end claims in the broiler chicken antitrust litigation.
· Tyson Foods (2021) — Agreed to $221.5 million to resolve allegations in the same case.
· JBS USA (2021) — Paid $13 million in the broiler case and later reached $52.5 million in pork-related settlements.
· Smithfield Foods (2022) — Settled pork antitrust claims for $83 million.
The largest single payout came in August, when a group of poultry farmers reached a $100 million settlement with Pilgrim’s Pride in a class-action lawsuit alleging price-fixing in the broiler industry. While these amounts are significant on paper, they rarely account for all of the alleged overcharges.
Antitrust law scholar Peter Carstensen said “the settlements never really cause [companies] to disgorge everything … there is a certain goodwill issue for businesses that they keep getting caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.”
One company did not pay to settle out of court.
Sanderson Farms took its defense all the way to a jury in the broiler chicken antitrust litigation and won. The 2023 verdict cleared the company of allegations that it conspired to cut production and raise prices.
