Tyson Foods and several others slapped with lawsuit for alleged price-fixing scheme

American multinational food corporation Tyson Foods, Inc. is facing an antitrust lawsuit, along with other food companies in the country, for its alleged price-fixing practices. 

According to a report by Ryan McCarthy of MEAT+POULTRY, two chicken farmers from Texas have filed the lawsuit against Tyson and other companies in the US District Court of Colorado. Karen and Marc McEntire are attempting to take the food conglomerate to court along with Sanderson Farms, Inc., Koch Foods Inc., Purdue Foods LLC, and Pilgrims Pride’s Corp. The five companies are collectively known as the major poultry processing companies in the United States. Tyson trumps the others as America’s behemoth in the food industry. 

Lead plaintiffs to the case, the McEntires, contend in their case filing that the representatives from each of the companies agreed to share each other’s company grower compensation data to control and dictate the amount of how much different growers in the country should be paid. 

This scheme has been happening since 2008, the case adds. 

The two narrate that they have worked with Pilgrims Pride’s and provided them with Broiler Grow-Out Services. As a requirement to be allowed to continue working for the company, they were asked to do improvements on their facility and pieces of equipment. 

However, the two were only paid small amounts by Pilgrims Pride’s which lead to them struggling to make ends meet. They even worked other jobs while tending to their facility just to make things stretch more than they can. The duo even incurred a debt amounting to $120,000 on the renovations that they have done to meet Pilgrims Pride’s demands. 

However, in the end, keeping the farm proved to be a burden to the two. They ended up quitting providing Broiler-Grow Out Services to Pilgrims Pride’s and selling their property out in 2014. 

When sought for their comment by representatives of MEAT+POULTRY, representatives from Pilgrims Pride’s didn’t respond. Like Pilgrims Pride’s, Perdue Farms’ mouth remained tight-lipped. They add that they don’t provide comments on pending cases. 

Meanwhile, Tyson Foods, through their representative, reiterated their policy of not sharing information with regards to contract farmers’ compensation to other companies. They assured that the contracts they hand out to partner farmers are free to be scrutinized and to discuss with anybody whom the contract farmer trusts.  

Editor’s note on the Tyson Foods Price-Fixing Scheme

This news article is created to keep you in the know and inform you of the latest news with regards to the lawsuit filed against Tyson Foods and a slew of other food companies.

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