North Carolina’s attorney general joined the United States’ civil antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats for working with chicken, pork, and turkey processors to artificially inflate the price of food.
Attorney General Josh Stein said with people struggling to afford their groceries, it’s unacceptable that Agri Stats would inflate the price of chicken, pork, and turkey through its alleged anticompetitive and illegal practices.
The lawsuit alleges that Agri Stats produced weekly and monthly reports for participating meat processors, which contain non-public information about sales prices, costs, compensation, and output. The processors then used their competitors’ data to set prices and output levels.
Stein said participating processors have accounted for more than 90 percent of broiler chicken sales, 80 percent of pork sales, and 90 percent of turkey sales in the United States.
Attorneys General of Minnesota, California, and Tennessee are also participants in the suit.
Copy of complaint: https://ncdoj.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Agri-Stats-Amended-Complaint.pdf
