FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, May 11, 2026
Contact: comms@ncdoj.gov
919-538-2809
RALEIGH – Meat producers in the United States will no longer have access to secret data that allowed them to set higher prices for meat.
Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general, and the U.S. Department of Justice have reached a settlement to shut down a secret data exchange used by meat processors responsible for roughly 95 percent of broiler chicken production in the country. The exchange allowed processors to coordinate higher prices for chicken, pork, and turkey at grocery stores across North Carolina and the rest of the country.
“This is exactly the kind of rigged game that upsets people, and we’re here to take it down,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “Meat processors had a secret tool that helped them raise prices on chicken, pork, and turkey. Families paid higher prices so a handful of companies could profit off information no one else was allowed to see. That’s not a market, it’s an illegal conspiracy – and we just ended it.”
Agri Stats produced comprehensive weekly and monthly reports about its clients’ sales, live production, processing, and profits and then sold those reports to participating processors. Processors then used those reports to increase their prices. For example, certain reports gave processors insights into future inventories, which allowed them to raise prices when they knew supply would be low. The sales reports ranked the price of a product compared with the price of a comparable product from a competitor, enabling producers to identify opportunities to raise prices. At one point, Agri Stats subscribers processed roughly 95 percent of the broiler chicken in the country.
The complaint also alleged that Agri Stats sold its reports only to meat processors, refusing to sell them to grocery stores, restaurants, farmers, or workers. That meant one side of every negotiation had detailed competitor data and the other side did not.
The North Carolina Department of Justice filed the antitrust lawsuit in November 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, alongside the U.S. Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of California, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The lawsuit alleged that Agri Stats violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by operating an unlawful information exchange that contributed to higher prices in the chicken, pork, and turkey markets.
This settlement ends this abusive, inflationary practice. It bars Agri Stats from producing sales reports and rank metrics, which were the main tools processors used to drive up prices, and it bars the company from publishing information that allows other processors to identify the contributing entity. The settlement requires Agri Stats to make continuing reports publicly available for purchase, which will help create a fairer, more competitive market. Additionally, Agri Stats will be subject to a compliance monitor for seven years and must adopt an antitrust compliance program.
Attorney General Jackson has previously fought to protect consumers from companies that violate antitrust laws. In April, he won a court order freezing the Nexstar and Tegna TV merger and won a seven-week long trial against Live Nation and Ticketmaster on all claims. He is also suing the software company RealPage for allegedly exploiting landlords’ competitively sensitive information to create a pricing algorithm that violated antitrust laws and raised rent prices.
Attorney General Jackson is joined in reaching the settlement by the U.S. Department of Justice and Attorneys General of California, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
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