NC attorney general, DOJ reach settlement ending secret meat pricing data exchange

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general have reached a settlement with Agri Stats, shutting down a secret data exchange that allowed meat processors responsible for roughly 95 percent of U.S. broiler chicken production to coordinate higher prices for chicken, pork and turkey, according to a press release from the Office of the Attorney General.

“This is exactly the kind of rigged game that upsets people, and we’re here to take it down,” Jackson said. “Meat processors had a secret tool that helped them raise prices on chicken, pork, and turkey. Families paid higher prices so a handful of companies could profit off information no one else was allowed to see. That’s not a market, it’s an illegal conspiracy — and we just ended it.”

Agri Stats produced detailed weekly and monthly reports on its clients’ sales, production, processing and profits and sold those reports exclusively to meat processors — not to grocery stores, restaurants, farmers or workers. The arrangement gave processors detailed competitor data that the other side of every negotiation lacked, according to the release. Processors used the reports to identify opportunities to raise prices, including by monitoring future inventory levels to increase prices when supply would be low.

The North Carolina Department of Justice filed the antitrust lawsuit in November 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, alongside the U.S. Department of Justice and the attorneys general of California, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, alleging Agri Stats violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Under the settlement, Agri Stats is barred from producing sales reports and rank metrics and from publishing information that would allow processors to identify competing entities. The company must make continuing reports publicly available for purchase and will be subject to a compliance monitor for seven years and an antitrust compliance program.

Jackson is joined in the settlement by the U.S. Department of Justice and the attorneys general of California, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. The settlement is the latest in a series of antitrust actions by Jackson, who has also won a trial against Live Nation and Ticketmaster and is suing software company RealPage over alleged rent price coordination.