Attorney General Ellison resolves antitrust lawsuit with Agri Stats
Settlement just before trial bars Agri Stats from sharing sensitive information among competing meat processors, which was causing higher prices for consumers
Attorney General Ellison’s office, DOJ, and bipartisan coalition of states amassed convincing evidence and expert reports that Agri Stats’ selectively shared reports which allowed companies to collude on de facto price fixing scheme that raised consumers’ food costs
May 7, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Today, Attorney General Keith Ellison led a bipartisan coalition of states working with the United States Department of Justice in resolving the civil antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats, Inc. for organizing and sharing anticompetitive information exchanges among meat processors. The settlement, reached just before trial was set to begin, requires Agri Stats to stop certain anticompetitive behavior regarding its data collection and sharing. For example, Agri Stats is required to stop collecting and sharing certain competitively sensitive information, including information on granular and recent sales and pricing information exclusively among competing meat processors. It must also make its now more limited reports available for purchase to any purchaser, not just the meat processors.
In their November 2023 lawsuit, Attorney General Ellison, along with the DOJ and bipartisan coalition of states, alleged that Agri Stats’ exclusive sharing of this type of sensitive information violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and allowed competing meat processors to collude with one another resulting in higher prices for American consumers. The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial in Minnesota on May 18, 2026.
"Competition is supposed to be a core principle of the free market, and my Office has power under the law to make sure markets are fair and hold companies accountable that are subverting them. Competition is so essential that it is illegal for rival businesses to conspire with one another to reduce competition by fixing prices or reducing production,” said Attorney General Ellison. “Agri Stats broke that law by collecting incredibly detailed price, sales, and production information from meat processors and sharing it with their rivals across almost the entire industry. Meat processors then weaponized that data, leading to higher chicken, pork, and turkey prices on families across America. It’s unconscionable that the high cost of food is driven in part by unfair competition, so I led a bipartisan coalition in taking Agri Stats to court to halt this scheme. Our settlement shows we can stop this kind of unlawful activity that has been driving up costs for the American people for far too long."
The 2023 lawsuit that Attorney General Ellison and the coalition filed alleged that Agri Stats produced comprehensive weekly and monthly reports for participating meat processors that spanned hundreds of pages and contained recent data relating to sales prices, costs, including worker and farmer compensation, and output. Gaining access to their competition’s pricing information allowed rival meat processors to, among other things, see where their prices were lower than the rest of the industry and adjust prices accordingly. Participating processors accounted for more than 90% of broiler chicken sales, 80% of pork sales, and 90% of turkey sales, meaning the vast majority of the American meat processing industry provided data for and received these extremely detailed reports.
Under the terms of the settlement:
- Agri Stats is prohibited from providing sales reports containing information that meat processors can use for anticompetitive purposes, including data on pricing.
- Agri Stats is also prohibited from publishing lists of participating meat processors, as well as rankings of individual meat processors, to prevent rival companies from seeing exactly how they compare to their competitors.
- Additionally, Agri Stats must make their reports available to any purchaser, whereas previously, Agri Stats withheld their reports from purchasers, workers, and the public.
- Agri Stats also agreed to ongoing monitoring by States and the Department of Justice to ensure compliance with the settlement, as well as monetary compensation for the coalition of plaintiff states.
The full list of terms can be found in the Proposed Final Judgment and the Stipulation and Order.
The effect of Agri Stats’ reports
In 2019, Agri Stats suspended its turkey and pork reporting programs after the filing of a private antitrust lawsuit. Agri Stats maintained its broiler chicken program, however, and did not foreclose eventually restarting its turkey and pork reporting programs. The 2019 halt created a natural experiment that allowed DOJ, Minnesota and the other plaintiff states to analyze what happened to turkey and pork prices once competitors stopped sharing information through Agri Stats.
The Government plaintiffs retained Professor Marc Rysman, a PhD economist and professor at Boston University who specializes in competition, to conduct a series of econometric analyses to assess the economic impact of Agri Stats’ information exchanges. Professor Rysman’s findings were clear and stark: pork prices decreased when pork processors stopped participating in Agri Stats, and turkey prices decreased when turkey processors stopped participating in Agri Stats. Additionally, bacon prices decreased after Agri Stats ended a separate bacon program the company ran from 2011 through 2018.
Professor Rysman also ran a regression analysis that focused on sales data exchanged in the broiler chicken market, which showed that broiler chicken processors used anonymized and aggregated data from Agri Stats to systematically raise prices. And while processors frequently used Agri Stats data to raise prices that resulted in higher costs to consumers, processors rarely used such data to lower prices on relatively overpriced items. Professor Rysman’s reports found that processors were disproportionately more likely to increase prices on products that Agri Stats identifies as relatively low-priced than they are to decrease prices on relatively high-priced products.
The end result of Agri Stats’ reports is clear. By sharing meat processors’ most granular cost, production, sales, and pricing data across the vast majority of processors in America, Agri Stats allowed these companies to collude with one another to thwart the free market and establish a de-facto scheme that raised costs on consumers across America. The settlement that Attorney General Ellison and the other plaintiffs reached bars Agri Stats from sharing such information in the future.
The state coalition that joined the lawsuit against Agri Stats with the Department of Justice and entered into this settlement agreement was led by Minnesota Attorney General Ellison and includes the attorneys general of California, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
Another significant antitrust win by Attorney General Ellison’s Office
This successful settlement with Agri Stats follows another recent and significant antitrust victory. On April 15, 2026, Minnesota and a coalition of 33 other states won a lawsuit against Live Nation, the owners of Ticketmaster, after a jury found that the company violated federal and state antitrust laws by eliminating competition and driving up costs for fans, artists, and venues across the country. During the five-week trial, the Department of Justice reached a settlement with Live Nation that would not have fundamentally changed the status quo. While some states joined the settlement, the 34-state coalition opted to continue their litigation against Live Nation, which resulted in the April 15 finding that Live Nation violated numerous antitrust laws.
Attorney General Ellison encourages Minnesota consumers and businesses who wish to report concerns about antitrust business practices to submit a report online via the Antitrust Report Form or call the Attorney General’s Office at (651) 296-3353 (Metro area), (800) 657-3787 (Greater Minnesota), or (800) 627-3529 (Minnesota Relay).
