by Ann Hess, National Hog Farmer magazine
Tyson Foods, Clemens Food Group and Triumph Foods have agreed to a $64 million settlement in a multidistrict litigation alleging one benchmarking company and seven of the nation’s leading pork producers conspired to limit the supply of pork and fix prices in violation of state and federal antitrust laws. If approved, Tyson will pay $50 million plus notice and administration costs of up to $2 million, Clemens will pay $10 million, and Triumph will pay $4 million.
In 2018, the plaintiffs, a group consisting of individuals or companies who directly or indirectly purchased pork products from one of the processors, filed the antitrust class-action lawsuit, claiming Clemens Food Group, JBS USA, Seaboard Foods, Smithfield Foods, Triumph Foods, Tyson Foods and Hormel Foods “entered into a conspiracy from at least 2009 to the present to fix, raise, maintain and stabilize the price of pork.” The plaintiffs contended that the processors participated in a price-fixing scheme by “systematically controlling their output” with benchmarking information received from Agri Stats.
Agri Stats works with clients individually to optimize efficiency opportunities on the farm by utilizing customized reports. Benchmarking is a tool used in livestock production to track metrics in production such as costs and pig performance. However, plaintiffs stated in the lawsuit that Agri Stats’s reports are “unlike typical industry report of this nature.” Instead, they claimed that since 2009, Agi Stats supplied “highly sensitive ‘bench marketing’ reports” to the listed food companies, allowing competitors to compare their profits and performance.
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