• by Steve Ellwanger , April 11, 2023

Perdue Farms, Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson Foods have agreed to pay the state of Washington a combined $28 million to settle charges they conspired to fix chicken prices for at least 15 years.

The latest settlements bring to 14 the number of companies that have settled a lawsuit brought against 19 chicken producers by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson in October of 2021.

Pilgrim’s will pay $11 million, Tyson $10.5 million and Perdue $6.5 million.

Previous settlements in the lawsuit range from a high of $1.4 million for Koch Foods to a low of $290,000 for Harrison Poultry.

According to Ferguson, the 14 companies have agreed to cooperate and “produce information and documentation” against Foster Farms, House of Raeford Farms, Norman W. Fries—which does business as Claxton Poultry Farms—and the recently merged Sanderson Farms and Wayne Farms.

Barring additional settlements, the five companies will go to trial in October of next year.

In Ferguson’s initial suit, the 19 companies—then representing 95% of all U.S. broiler chicken production—participated in a “wide-ranging illegal conspiracy to inflate and manipulate prices, rig contract bids and coordinate industry supply reductions to maximize profits.

Broiler chicken is a term used to describe virtually all chicken produced for meat and sold to grocers and restaurants.

The alleged price-fixing activities occurred since at least 2008, according to the suit.

In one example cited by Ferguson in a statement released last week, a former Tyson Foods sales representative admitted that he colluded with employees from three other chicken producers to make a “substantial pricing increase” in the products they all sold to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Popeye’s and Boston Market.

“The restaurants did not know about the price-fixing conspiracy among the producers. The producers colluded down to the tenth of a penny per pound of chicken to ensure their bulk meat brought each company the most profit.”