Judge John R. Tunheim, U.S. District Judge for the District of Minnesota, denied an AgriStats Inc. motion to dismiss a September 2023 lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and six states. The May 28th ruling denied a motion to transfer the litigation to the home state of Indiana.
The Department of Justice and the states claim that AgriStats fostered anticompetitive activity in the meat and poultry sectors. The benchmark costing system was established in 1985 for broilers and was extended in 2001 for turkeys and during 2007 for pork. Following filing of antitrust litigation, pork and turkey producers withdrew from the AgriStats program in 2019.
AgriStats was established by agricultural economists to provide historical cost data to producers of laying hens as an outgrowth of a Purina division and was then extended to broilers. The company was purchased by Elanco Animal Health but was subsequently divested to a private investor group.
AgriStats was named as a codefendant in a series of civil actions alleging collusion among pork and broiler producers as a vehicle to either manipulate prices of products to diverse customer segments and also in relation to remuneration of contract growers and wage rates for workers.