Key Points
Sept 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday filed an antitrust lawsuit against data company Agri Stats, alleging that its weekly reports on meat pricing and sales have enabled anticompetitive practices in the chicken, pork, and turkey industries...
Meat companies including Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods (TSN.N) have previously faced lawsuits from restaurants and other food buyers alleging they use reports from Agri Stats to conspire to drive up meat prices...
Meat processors pay millions of dollars for Agri Stats reports that include "loosely anonymized" cost, output, and price information, which the companies then use to align their prices with competitors, the DOJ complaint said...
In one example laid out in the complaint, Tyson Foods in January 2010 allegedly told its sales employees to use Agri Stats data to negotiate for higher prices from retail buyers...
The companies using Agri Stats reports account for more than 90% of broiler chicken, 80% of pork, and 90% of turkey sales in the U.S., the DOJ said in a press release...
