The Justice Department has filed a proposed settlement in its antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats, a data provider and consulting company for meat processors, saying the move would lower food prices and increase competition in the meat industry.
Agri Stats operated information exchanges where rivals like Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms and Smithfield Foods provided granular, up-to-date costs, prices and other data. In return, the companies received somewhat anonymized reports.
The Justice Department said meat processors had used that information to limit supply and increase prices, all without having to communicate with one another directly.
The settlement, which includes a $350,000 fine, still needs approval by the judge overseeing the case. It would force Agri Stats to sell its reports to anyone, including grocery stores and food supply companies that buy large amounts of meat. It would also prohibit Agri Stats from reporting certain cost and sales data, and restrict its ability to report certain plant-level and up-to-date information.
With midterm elections coming this year and American consumers growing frustrated with rising costs, the Trump administration said the Agri Stats case was just the first step in reining in the large agribusinesses that control much of the food industry.
“This Department of Justice is laser-focused on making everyday life affordable for all Americans,” said Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, in a statement announcing the settlement on Thursday.
According to the department’s complaint, which was filed in 2023 under the Biden administration, one executive of Smithfield, the largest pork processor in the United States, summarized Agri Stats’ advice this way: “Just raise your price.”
Agri Stats, which is based in Fort Wayne, Ind., previously operated in the pork, turkey and chicken industries, but suspended the pork and turkey information exchanges because of private antitrust lawsuits. The settlement would largely apply to the chicken industry.
The case was scheduled to go to trial this month. Six states, including California and Texas, joined the lawsuit against Agri Stats and signed on to the proposed settlement.
“This settlement proves the department’s commitment to promoting transparency in the marketplace, enforcing the law and delivering real relief for American consumers at the grocery store,” Stanley Woodward, who oversees the Justice Department’s antitrust division as the associate attorney general, said in the department statement.
Agri Stats, which has about 70 employees, argued that it was a small company being picked on by the Justice Department, and that its work lowered meat prices by helping processors operate more efficiently. In a statement responding to the proposed settlement, the company’s president, Eric Scholer, said chicken processors made only about 4 cents of profit per pound of meat sold.
“The only way those companies can continue to keep prices low for consumers and remain in business is to make their operations as efficient as possible, and Agri Stats helps them to do exactly that,” Mr. Scholer said.
Agri Stats, which did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, would be subject to its terms for 10 years.
The settlement is the latest by the Justice Department in a case it inherited from the Biden administration. Top Biden antitrust enforcers said litigating lawsuits against companies was important even if they lost the case in a courtroom.
In March, the department settled a long-running lawsuit that accused Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster, of abusing its power as a monopoly. A group of state attorneys general objected to the settlement and secured a jury verdict against the company last month. Trump appointees also settled lawsuits against the software firm RealPage, which was accused of facilitating collusion among landlords to raise rents, and Amazon, which the Federal Trade Commission said had made it hard for consumers to cancel its Prime subscription service.
The Agri Stats settlement was criticized by groups that favor more robust antitrust enforcement against corporate concentration.
“The message being sent here is to collude more discreetly,” said Lee Hepner, the senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project. By not taking the case to trial or seeking to prohibit Agri Stats from sharing any information at all, he said, the Justice Department is giving up the ability to set an important precedent across industries.
“There is an Agri Stats in every industry in this economy,” Mr. Hepner said. “This case was designed to reframe how we think about information exchanges as one of the root causes in how we think about price hikes and the cartelization of our economy.”
The Justice Department could soon bring a number of agricultural antitrust cases. At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Blanche confirmed that the department was investigating the beef industry, where, he said, four companies control about 85 percent of the market.
“The current market structure and high concentration in the industry indicate anticompetitive activity,” Mr. Blanche said. The department has reviewed more than three million documents and contacted hundreds of ranchers, cattlemen and meat processors as part of its investigation.
The Justice Department has also signed a memorandum of agreement with the Agriculture Department to share information on competition within the seed and fertilizer industry, where just a handful of companies control most of the market, and began investigating major egg producers last year after egg prices soared.
David McCabe contributed reporting.
Kevin Draper is a business correspondent covering the agriculture industry. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].
The post Justice Dept. Settles Case Against Provider of Meat Industry Data appeared first on New York Times.
