McDonald’s Sues Cargill, Other Meat Producers in Beef Price-Fixing Suit
Is Cargill conspiring to fix the price of beef? That’s one of the allegations in a lawsuit filed by McDonald’s Corp. late last week.
In a suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Friday, the fast food chain alleges that Wayzata-based Cargill and other beef producers intentionally limited their beef supplies to drive up prices. Other defendants include Brazilian meat giant JBS, Tyson Foods, Swift Beef Co., and National Beef Packing Co.
The lawsuit claims that the defendants worked together to “fix, raise, stabilize, and/or maintain the price of beef sold to [McDonald’s] and others at supracompetitive levels – that is, prices artificially higher than beef prices would have been in the absence of their conspiracy.”
“Defendants and their co-conspirators implemented their conspiracy by collusively reducing the slaughter-ready cattle and beef supply, which over time artificially elevated the price of beef that they sold,” the suit stated.
McDonald’s alleges that the beef price-fixing scheme has been going on since at least 2015.
The lawsuit noted that the U.S. Department of Justice had initiated an investigation into “suspiciously high beef prices” back in March 2020.
This isn’t the first time that a fast food chain has taken legal action against big meat producers. Almost three years ago, a trio of restaurants filed a suit against Hormel, JBS, and others, for allegedly fixing the price of pork. That followed a class-action suit making similar claims in 2018.
Defendants in some of those cases eventually reached settlements, though they’ve denied wrongdoing. Earlier this year, Hormel agreed to an $11 million settlement in one class-action case, the Star Tribune reported.
There have also been other related beef price-fixing cases that have been consolidated in Minnesota federal court, Reuters reported on Monday.
Cargill didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday morning.
