The Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats for organizing and managing anticompetitive information exchanges among broiler chicken, pork and turkey processors.
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The complaint alleges that Agri Stats violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by collecting, integrating and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost and output among competing meat processors.
This conduct harms customers, including grocery stores and American families.
The complaint, filed in the District of Minnesota, alleges that Agri Stats has for years produced comprehensive weekly and monthly reports for participating meat processors, which use the data to set prices and output levels.
Spanning hundreds of pages, the reports contain recent data relating to sales prices, costs such as worker and farmer compensation and output that are often detailed by facility or company.
Participating processors accounted for more than 90% of broiler chicken sales, 80% of pork sales and 90% of turkey sales in the United States.
The complaint further alleges that Agri Stats understood that meat processors have used these reports for anticompetitive purposes and, in some instances, even encouraged meat processors to raise prices and reduce supply.
While distributing troves of competitively sensitive information among participating processors, Agri Stats withholds its reports from meat purchasers, workers and American consumers, resulting in an information asymmetry that further exacerbates the competitive harm of Agri Stats’ information exchanges.
The complaint alleges that Agri Stats’ scheme continues to this day in the chicken processing industry, among others.
While Agri Stats paused its turkey and pork reporting after facing several private antitrust lawsuits, Agri Stats has expressed an intent to resume such reporting after these lawsuits’ resolution. ■
A low pressure wave forming along a cold front will track across the New England coast this morning, bringing a period of rain, heavy at times for much of New England, especially for Maine today.