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.
Here’s What’s Really Going on With Skyrocketing Food Prices
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.
It's Official: Florida Criminalized the Sale of Lab-Grown Meat
"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.
Not long after the lockdown, a lot of cattle herds were refuced. Beef was artificially low for a few months and then shot up.
Grain is not cheap, or at least not at any co-ops, Agway, Tractor Supply...
It's not bird flu wiping out farms and it's not the increased cost of feed. It's not because of increased cost of nitrogen in fertilizer for said feed for the animals and it's not the increased cost of labor all along the way and it's not the increased cost of gasoline which impacts transportation all across the board.
No, it's none of those things. It's corporate greed. Yeah, that's the ticket.
“ Grain is not cheap, or at least not at any co-ops, Agway, Tractor Supply...”
Price of corn has dropped a lot in 12 months
I posted this recently, and I didn’t get a single response on it, but I am not sure it was because people know what these terms mean. The reason is, I have heard a few conservative voices talking about these things, and they seem to get two of them mixed up.
But I have to keep in mind it might be me that is wrong or confused about them too. I am not an economic dunce, but it isn’t my strong point, either.
There are three terms regarding prices that I hear: Price Controls, Price Fixing, and Price Gouging.
I think almost everyone understands Price Controls. Price Controls are where the government sets a price for something, usually resulting in shortages of product, the birth of black markets and general economic chaos in anything that interacts with that sector. The Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, and...Richard Nixon’s Administration clearly show what happens when the government gets involved in those things.
It is Price Fixing and Price Gouging that seem to me to be confused by many people.
I have always viewed Price Fixing as something that happens in a conglomeration of suppliers of a product. For example, if Shell, Exxon, and BP got together and agreed they were going to charge X amount for their crude in a certain location, that would be Price Fixing. (I assume they would have to also be the three major ones in an area as well, so they didn’t have to worry about a larger one undercutting their set price.
And Price Gouging would be an individual taking advantage of a situation, such as charging $20 a bottle for water in an area where there was a natural disaster, or hotels which normally charge$150 a night in those same areas charging $800 a night.
I see this as possible Price Fixing. Am I on target?
It’s not. Vegans are liberals and they hate meat. They force farmers to pay for their cows farting. They restrict fertilizer production. They tax petroleum producers out of business. They subsidize using agricultural land to make ethanol and biodiesel fuels. All food is more expensive anyway and it’s because the government subsidies food with food stamps giving food stamp users greater economic power over production disproportionate to their own actual contribution to the overall economy.
I guess not many here remember Nixon's price controls. Prices were pretty stable until price controls took effect and price increases were limited but when one was allowed they sure went up the maximum allowed.
It is high due to inflation caused by the Fed Gov.
Thats the point at which the article lost its credibility for me.
> I guess not many here remember Nixon’s price controls. <
I’m old enough to remember that. Even old-time Republicans can be stupid, I guess. Price controls bring stability for a time, but then are followed by shortages and misery.
Better to take a spoonful of distasteful medicine early than a bucketful later.
And as a side note, before 1965 you could go down to your local bank and exchange a $10 bill for a roll of quarters. Those quarters were 90% silver. So that $10 represents something real, silver.
LBJ put an end to that.
They wouldn’t go through the trouble of using lawfare against a company to try to legitimize the Biden admin bullcrap that inflation has nothing to do with it, would they?
They also want to keep prices high in an effort to force people to try and eat the frankenmeat they have been pushing.
12 months is not a long enough timeframe to see what is happening econolocally. How does it compare to the previous 4, 8, 12 years...
.
We have a local meat market that does a lot of their own processing. They also used to process deer in deer season, but got out of that business because they were tired of being totally swamped, and it didn’t make sense to expand the place just for that.
They have some pretty good bulk prices sometimes, but, you need to have a lot of space in the freezer to take advantage.
Do you remember how meat sellers got around some of the price controls? They would make a slight change in a cut of meat give it a new name and then they were allowed to set a price the first time around. I remember how many names of meat cuts changed after that.
I recently bought 12 angus burgers at Walmart for over $23.
I started to notice the price increase a few years ago when it was about $1.25 a burger and now it is $2 a burger.
s/b Meat and Poultry Is Wildly Expensive Now -- and It Could [Not Possibly] Be Due to Price Fixing.
Bidenomics and Open Borders are to blame.
There’s a reason the Chinese have been buying food processing plants - and it has NOTHING to do with profits... This crap plays into Harris’s delusions of commie price controls. Don’t fall for it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.