Tyson Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Chicken Price-Fixing Scheme

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Tyson Foods, along with other chicken producers, have been hit with a class action lawsuit filed by a number of major grocers alleging the companies entered into a price-fixing scheme to artificially inflate prices.

The plaintiffs, including Kroger, Hy-Vee, and Albertsons, allege in the Tyson chicken price-fixing class action lawsuit that the chicken producers worked together to reduce the number of “broiler” chickens available. In turn, the grocers had to pay higher prices.

“Broiler chickens constitute approximately 98% of all chicken meat sold in the United States,” explains the Tyson chicken class action lawsuit. “Defendants are the leading suppliers of chicken in an industry with over $30 billion in annual wholesale revenue, and control approximately 90% of the wholesale chicken market. The industry is highly concentrated, with a small number of large producers in the United States controlling supply.”

The Tyson chicken price-fixing class action lawsuit comes on the heels of several class action lawsuits brought by consumers, chicken growers, and direct and indirect purchasers alleging that the companies secretly schemed to inflate the price of poultry, affecting consumers across the market.

“In 2008, faced with dropping prices and low profits, Defendants collectively began cutting their ability to ramp up production by materially reducing their breeder flocks,” alleges the Tyson class action lawsuit. “While in the past, Defendants undertook traditional, short-term production cuts, this was a significant shift in their behavior.”

“Defendants’ collective market-changing cuts to breeder flocks – a first round from 2008 to early 2009, and a subsequent round from 2011 to 2012 as the conspiracy continued into the current decade – effectively eliminated their ability to meaningfully increase supply for years.”

According to the Tyson chicken class action lawsuit, the price-fixing scheme was reinforced by statements by senior executives who called for “discipline” when it came to flock sizes. Further, Tyson and other producers used reports facilitated by Agri Stats, another defendant in the action, to coordinate the scheme.

“By their wrongful conduct as alleged in this complaint, defendants not only materially reduced or eliminated the historical boom-and-bust cycle of the chicken industry, they propped up chicken prices during periods of rapidly falling input costs by, among other means, coordinating supply restrictions and manipulating one or more broiler price indices,” alleges the Tyson chicken price-fixing class action lawsuit.

The Tyson chicken price-fixing lawsuit alleges that that industry has operated the scheme for nearly a decade.

“This is a case about how some of America’s chicken producers reached illegal agreements and restrained trade beginning at least as early as 2008 through at least as late as 2016,” alleges the Tyson chicken price-fixing lawsuit. “Through those unlawful agreements, Defendants successfully implemented supra-competitive chicken prices to Plaintiffs and other purchasers throughout the United States.”

While one of the companies accused of engaging in the price-fixing scheme settled a class action with direct purchasers by paying $2.25 million, a judge recently upheld class action claims against the other companies.

Kroger, Hy-Vee, and Albertsons are represented by Richard Alan Arnold, William J. Blechman, Douglas H. Patton, Samuel J. Randall and Brandon S. Floch of Kenny Nachwalter PA.

The Tyson Chicken Price-Fixing Class Action Lawsuit is The Kroger Co., et al. v. Tyson Foods Inc., et al., Case No. 1:18-­cv-­04534, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.