Pork Price-Fixing Class Action Says Consumers Pay Inflated Pork Prices

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A group of pork buyers have filed a class action lawsuit alleging a price-fixing conspiracy in the pork industry.

Twelve plaintiffs filed the pork price-fixing class action lawsuit against Agri Stats Inc., Clemens Food Group LLC, Hormel Foods Corporation, Indiana Packers Corporation, JBS USA, Seaboard Foods LLC, Smithfield Foods Inc., Triumph Foods LLC and Tyson Foods LLC.

These pork integrators are the leading suppliers in the pork industry, which reportedly has about $20 billion in annual commerce, the pork price-fixing class action lawsuit says. The plaintiffs claim that the defendants and their alleged co-conspirators control about 80 percent of the wholesale pork market.

According to the pork price-fixing class action lawsuit, the defendants have been involved in a conspiracy since at least 2009 to fix, raise, maintain and stabilize the price of pork, causing customers in the United States to pay inflated pork prices.

“In furtherance of their conspiracy, defendants exchanged detailed, competitively sensitive, and closely guarded non-public information about prices, capacity, sales volume and demand through their co-conspirator Agri-Stats,” the plaintiffs allege in the pork antitrust class action lawsuit.

Agri Stats allegedly began providing highly sensitive customized reports to pork integrators that allowed them to compare their profits against those of competing companies.

“The type of information available in these reports is not the type of information that competitors would provide each other in a normal, competitive market,” the pork price-fixing class action lawsuit states. “Instead, the provision of this detailed information acts as the proverbial smoke-filled room of the cartels of yesteryear.”

According to the pork price-fixing class action lawsuit, Agri Stats provides the defendants with sensitive information such as profits, costs, prices and slaughter information together with information that allows them to determine which data belongs to which producer.

“The effect of this information exchange was to allow the pork integrators to monitor each other’s production and hence control supply and price,” the plaintiffs say.

They claim that the data provided by Agri Stats strongly suggest the company is engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy with the other defendants. Courts consistently hold that current and forward-looking data–such as the type of data provided by Agri Stats–has significant potential for creating an anticompetitive effect in the marketplace.

Further, the fact that the data provided in the reports is specific to pork producers and that none of the information is included in the Agri Stats reports also supports the plaintiffs’ pork price-fixing allegations, they argue. Because Agri Stats is a subscription service, it could ensure that its information was only available to co-conspirators.

This anticompetitive conduct had the effect of causing pork buyers to pay artificially inflated prices, according to the pork price-fixing class action lawsuit.

The pork price-fixing class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the plaintiffs and a proposed Class of consumers who purchased pork indirectly from a defendant or co-conspirator in the United States since Jan. 1, 2009.

The plaintiffs are represented by Daniel E. Gustafson, Daniel C. Hedlund, Michelle J. Looby and Joshua J. Rissman of Gustafson Glueck PLLC and by Steve W. Berman, Shana E. Scarlett and Elizabeth A. Fegan of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP.

The Pork Price-Fixing Class Action Lawsuit is Wanda Duryea, et al. v. Agri Stats Inc., et al., Case No. 0:18-cv-01776, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.