Guebert: ‘Price fixing’ settlements need big fix
Alan Guebert, 04 April 2021
In a too-common story in American agriculture, Archer Daniels Midland last month agreed to pay farmers $45 million to settle what the March 13 Wall Street Journal described as “price-fixing allegations leveled at its peanut processing division.”
While $45 million is, indeed, peanuts to ADM, this isn’t the first time the Chicago-based company has faced market manipulation charges. In the late 1990s, ADM spent years and millions on criminal and civil price-fixing settlements. But ADM isn’t the only ag master of the universe to settle recent civil lawsuits over alleged market irregularities.
For example:
• In October 2020, Brazilian-owned Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., the nation’s second largest poultry processor, agreed to pay $110.5 million to settle U.S. Justice Department allegations of “price fixing in broiler chicken parts,” reported Agriculture.com.
• In mid-January 2021, Tyson Foods Inc. “reached an agreement in the broiler chicken antitrust civil price fixing litigation brought against the company, as well as many other poultry processors, to pay $221.5 million,” according to Meat+Poultry.com.
• And — again — there was Pilgrim’s Pride, which “agreed to pay $75 million on Jan. 11. Both companies did not admit liability as part of the settlements.”
And while all this lawyerly rock-picking with the chicken giants was occurring in 2020, “The Justice Department … deepen(ed) federal antitrust scrutiny of the $213 billion U.S. meat industry, following complaints from farmers and meat buyers about industry pricing practices,” noted the Wall Street Journal last June 5.
