Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
In the mid-2000s, a poultry researcher approached James MacDonald, then a branch chief for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, with some data. Its detail and depth shocked him.
“My reaction was, ‘Jeez, is this legal?'” MacDonald said.
The question remains unanswered, albeit not for lack of trying: Agri Stats — a widely utilized, privately-held data and analytics firm for the meat processing industry — has been named in more than 90 lawsuits since 2016, making it the second-most sued company in the industry over that time span (Tyson Foods is first). All the lawsuits accuse the company of facilitating anti-competitive behavior because, with the almost real-time data, meat processors can see what their counterparts are planning.
Peter Carstensen, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin and award-winning author on antitrust law, was also wary of the data Agri Stats compiled when he saw it.
“It looked like a serious problem,” he said. “And then the lawsuits began to come.”
Most allegations are similar, even across industries. Meat producers “conspired and combined to fix, raise, maintain, and stabilize the price of” product, reads the first lawsuit, filed in 2016 on behalf of Maplevale Farms, a New York food service company.
Wholesale and retail price data from the USDA reflects a rise and stabilization in consumer prices since early 2008, when the conspiracy is alleged to have started affecting the market, particularly in pork.
After remaining relatively stable between 2000 and 2008, pork retail prices shot up almost 50% from January 2008 to a then-record high in September 2014. After that peak, retail prices remained high, always at least 25% higher than 2008 levels.
The numerous complaints allege Agri Stats, which saw its earnings nearly triple over about the scope of years highlighted in lawsuits, is part of the set-up.
“Agri Stats acted as an agent and/or co-conspirator of Defendants by facilitating the exchange of confidential, proprietary, and competitively sensitive data among Defendants and their co-conspirators,” according to Maplevale’s filing.
Agri Stats did not return multiple requests for comment that included detailed questions about its operations and function.
The litigators could form a well-rounded food court: Buffalo Wild Wings, Chick-fil-A, Hooters, Sonic and Whataburger. Target, Walmart, Sysco and U.S. Foods have also sued. Geographically, the lawsuits span the United States — the state of Alaska and commonwealth of Puerto Rico are among filers.
Most of the lawsuits have been folded into industry-specific complaints for poultry, pork and turkey. Some have been settled.
Tyson Foods, one of the largest meat processing companies operating in the U.S., will pay over $220 million to avoid liability in poultry price-fixing cases. In the turkey industry, Tyson has also agreed to smaller monetary settlements that include cooperation with providing documents, data and record of communication between the other defendants, which include Agri Stats.
Though a monetary amount was not noted in a federal court filing, Perdue has settled — pending judicial approval — a different class action poultry price-fixing case that doesn’t name Agri Stats as a defendant. And in pork, JBS reached a $20 million settlement while denying allegations.
Pilgrim’s Pride pled guilty to price-fixing and faces a $107 million fine as the result of an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation into chicken industry price-fixing. Four of the company’s executives, plus Koch Foods, were indicted last week by a federal grand jury on price-fixing charges. (Agri Stats was not mentioned in the indictments.)
As Agri Stats finds itself at the center of price-fixing conspiracy allegations, it maintains a low profile. Its website is simple, its social media presence is minimal and its nondescript office sits in a business park in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
That’s the nature of Agri Stats, which “has always been kind of a quiet company,” then-company president Blair Snyder said in a 2009 meeting with a poultry producer’s shareholders. (Snyder’s brother, Brian, now occupies the role.)
“There’s not a whole lot of people that know a lot about us obviously due to confidentiality that we try to protect,” he said. “We don’t advertise. We don’t talk about what we do.”
Agri Stats reports, when discussed in court documents and among experts, seem almost mythical. Some people have seen portions of them, some people know some people who have seen portions of them.
The reports are widely utilized. In that 2009 meeting, Snyder said about 97% of the poultry industry and 95% of the turkey industry were working with Agri Stats. While he didn’t offer a number on pork industry participation, Snyder called the companies “pretty much a list of who’s who” in swine.
Even the federal government has used the company’s data.
While the terms of the contract aren’t perfectly clear, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, has purchased data from Agri Stats over the last decade — something that surprised MacDonald, who worked in a different area of the USDA.
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