Posted on 08/31/2024 2:49:09 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Agri Stats, the data analytics and consulting company, unlawfully collected competitive industry data. Here's what to know.
If the price of meat — specifically chicken, pork, and turkey — feels incredibly high right now, that's because it is. Though it may have little to do with actual supply or demand.
In May, a judge ruled that the data analytics and consulting company Agri Stats must face a lawsuit that accused the company of a price-fixing scheme that included major chicken, pork, and turkey processors across the U.S. In August, the company attempted to have the lawsuit thrown out, only to have a judge once again reject its request.
According to Reuters, in May, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minnesota first denied the motion for dismissal of the suit brought forth by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and six individual states. Tunheim ruled that the Justice Department's antitrust claims were sufficient to move forward.
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The lawsuit alleges that the company unlawfully collected competitive industry data and shared it with its subscribers — who pay millions to access the data — then used that information to keep its prices inflated to "artificially high" levels.
"The complaint alleges that Agri Stats violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by collecting, integrating, and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost, and output among competing meat processors," the DOJ's press release on the lawsuit reads. "This conduct harms customers, including grocery stores and American families."
The DOJ's release on the case also noted that the data included information on sales pricing, fixed costs like worker and farmer compensation, and output by individual companies. Participating processors in the data sharing account for "more than 90% of broiler chicken sales, 80% of pork sales and 90% of turkey sales in the United States," it added.
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"The complaint further alleges that Agri Stats understood that meat processors have used these reports for anti-competitive purposes and, in some instances, even encouraged meat processors to raise prices and reduce supply," the DOJ explained. "While distributing troves of competitively sensitive information among participating processors, Agri Stats withholds its reports from meat purchasers, workers, and American consumers, resulting in an information asymmetry that further exacerbates the competitive harm of Agri Stats’ information exchanges."
Agri Stats has denied any wrongdoing, telling Agriculture Drive in 2023 that it has played a "vital" role in lowering the cost of these products instead.
“DOJ’s lawsuit threatens to unwind these benefits and cause further harm to Americans who already are struggling with inflated food costs,” Justin Bernick, a partner at Hogan Lovells representing Agri Stats, stated.
In August, More Perfect Union released a deep dive on the topic, which is well worth 10 minutes of your time to watch right now.
B period S period.
Unless you consider utilizing the law of supply-and-demand to set the price to be “price fixing.”
Just in time for price control justification. NO.
Typical liberal BS.
What's the point in buying a 3/8" thick NY Strip? You can't even cook it properly.
Whole Foods and Fresh Market still cut meats. Unfortunately paying $18 a pound for a steak is insane. Whole Foods does have pork belly of very good quality at a fair price.
> This sounds like MSM setting up for Kamala’s “Price Gouging” stuff. <
Maybe there is price fixing. I don’t know. But your thought was my first thought as well. My Democrat senator has been running ads saying the same thing as Kamala. It communist pandering. They want price controls set by people who know nothing about economics, farming, or anything else.
But, hey. It works in Venezuela, so why not here?
“ Yes, especially if you count burning down poultry farms and cattle barns,
and infecting poultry with diseases. ”
There is a lot of meat around so that’s not affecting anything.
Grain is cheap so animals can be fed to higher weights so more meat produced that way .
Except for bacon, pork has been cheaper than beef and most chicken here in northeast Oklahoma for at least three years. Beef is sky high.
Aldi’s meat prices around here are high. Must be regional.
Health decline and death
Rogers’s seven-decade career wound down in 2017, as he encountered health problems that included a diagnosis of bladder cancer.[54] On March 20, 2020, Rogers died at the age of 81, while under hospice care at his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia.[55][56] He is interred in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.[57]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Rogers
Please read my Tagline!
At Walmart...cheapest dozen was $4.82 or 18 for $5.86. dayum.
Problems:
- higher costs of doing business
- Big Chicken gets bigger in response to higher costs
- Big Chicken reduces locations
- longer delivery paths
Apparently the costs of labor, fuel, feed and fertilizer haven’t gone up in this industry.
It’s all price fixing.
Did they ask Jimmy Dean about this?
We raise our own poultry and eggs and buy everything else locally. The price of name brand feed has gone up considerable but from the local mill it is still affordable.
>> This sounds like MSM setting up for Kamala’s “Price Gouging stuff.
“Egg”zackly. 😉
The government prints money and EVERYTHING costs more, not just meat. Too many dollars chasing too few goods. It’s text book.
China controls the pork market in the USA.
The ChiComs are active in the US meat processing industry.
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