False experiences enabled anti-competitive practices in turkey, hen and beef
29 September 2023
2 minute learn
The United States Division of Justice on Thursday filed an antitrust lawsuit towards knowledge corporate Agri Stats, alleging that its weekly experiences on meat pricing and gross sales have enabled anticompetitive practices within the hen, beef, and turkey industries, reported Reuters.
Meat corporations together with Smithfield Meals and Tyson Meals have up to now confronted court cases from eating places and different meals patrons alleging they use experiences from Agri Stats to conspire to pressure up meat costs.
“Agri Stats operates its data exchanges to advertise overall business earnings on the expense of pageant,” mentioned the DOJ’s grievance.
Lawyer Justin Bernick of regulation company Hogan Lovells, which is representing Agri Stats within the DOJ case, mentioned the corporate denies the allegations.
“Agri Stats supplies important benchmarking services and products that assist stay manufacturing prices and costs low for shoppers,” Bernick mentioned in an e mail.
Meat processors pay thousands and thousands of greenbacks for Agri Stats experiences that come with “loosely anonymized” price, output, and worth data, which the firms then use to align their costs with competition, the DOJ grievance mentioned.
In a single instance specified by the grievance, Tyson Meals in January 2010 allegedly informed its gross sales workers to make use of Agri Stats knowledge to barter for upper costs from retail patrons.
Tyson didn’t reply to questions on whether or not the corporate makes use of Agri Stats experiences or supply remark at the lawsuit.
The corporations the usage of Agri Stats experiences account for greater than 90% of broiler hen, 80% of beef, and 90% of turkey gross sales in the USA, the DOJ mentioned in a press unencumber.