Agri Stats deal would widen access to meat data

The Justice Department is trying to strip away what prosecutors describe as a private information edge inside the meat business. In federal court in Minnesota, the proposed settlement would require Agri Stats to make its reporting and manuals available to people in the United States under the settlement’s conditions, instead of keeping them inside a processor-only system.

A private edge in plain sight

Prosecutors say Agri Stats recruited major U.S. chicken, pork and turkey processors into an exclusive subscription and consulting business that let rivals exchange competitively sensitive information in the broiler chicken, pork and turkey markets. The underlying complaint says those exchanges unreasonably restrained trade.

Agri Stats then allegedly audited and manipulated the data, compared it, and sent it back in detailed reports, often in less than a week, covering live production, processing, sales and profitability.

What changes for the industry

The government says Agri Stats was built to raise industry-wide profitability in the meat industries it serviced, and that aim can hurt competition. The settlement would not break up the company or ban meat market data altogether, but it would open the reporting system much more widely than prosecutors say it has been.

That matters because these markets reach everyday buyers. Grocery shoppers, restaurant customers, farmers and suppliers all deal with an industry where the biggest companies control supply chains and see one another’s numbers more closely than outsiders do.

The remedy prosecutors want

The Justice Department filed a proposed final judgment, stipulation and competitive impact statement in the Agri Stats antitrust case. Under the proposed final judgment, Agri Stats would have to make all Reporting and Manuals available to any person in the United States, as long as they meet the settlement’s conditions.