Pilgrim’s Pride $100 Million Meat Packer Price-Fixing Settlement Sets Record
Written by Chriss W. Street
Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation as one of America’s largest chicken processor, offered to pay $100 million to settle anti-trust claims that it conspired with other meat integrators to underpay contract growers and over-charge customers.
Pilgrim’s Pride is owned by the largest meat packer in the world,Brazil’s JBS S. A. The multi-national company in America operates 26 slaughter plants, 33 hatcheries and 27 feed mills. With revenues of over $10 billion, Pilgrim’s Pride U.S. operations on a weekly basis processed 161.7 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken in 2023.
The Republican Trump Justice Department filed a criminal Sherman Anti-Trust Act complaint in 2020 against Pilgrim’s Pride for conspiring with Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Sanderson Farms, Koch Foods and 17 other co-conspirators that sell over half the chickens consumed in the United States.
The complaint claimed that “Big Chicken” for over a decade had secretly colluded in a scheme of deceit to share confidential information concerning grower compensation with other poultry companies, as well as agreeing with other companies to not attempt to recruit one another’s growers.
Pilgrim's Pride Corporation in February 2021 pleaded guilty to price fixing and bid rigging for broiler chicken products. The company was the first co-conspirator that agreed to plead guilty to the anti-trust charges and paid fines of $107 million.
Following the Trump Administration’s campaign on behalf of farmers, the Justice Department has closed settlements with Tyson Foods for $21 million, Perdue Farms for $14.75 million,Sanderson Farms for $17.75 million, and Koch Foods for $15.5 million.
Coupled with the proposed Pilgrim’s Pride settlement, the $168.5 million offer from Pilgrim’s Pride, the $168.5 million settlement would be the largest meat price-fixing award in history.
The most visible victims of the Big Chicken price-fixing scheme include KFC, Popeyes, Kroger, Costco and Walmart. But every American was hurt by thousands of smaller grocery stores and family restaurants be over-charged and passing the cost on to consumers.
The Mountain Top Times reported just over a week ago that in another Trump Administration anti-trust action that was begun in 2018, Federal Judge Amit Mehta Google found at trial that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly” in the $400 billion interstate search advertising markets in violation of Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
The court adjudged Google is paying tens of billions of dollars each year in kick-backs to companies including Apple, LG, Motorola, Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile, Mozilla, Opera, and Verizon to make sure Google is the only search engine consumers saw.
The Google anti-trust trial penalty phase is now set for October,and could result in Google paying all-time record tech penalties and fines that could exceed $100 billion
.