McDonald's sues top meat packers for allegedly colluding to inflate the price of beef
McDonald’s has some beef with today’s largest meat packers
NEW YORK — McDonald’s has some beef with today’s largest meat packers.
The fast food giant is suing the U.S. meat industry's “Big Four” — Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef Packing Company — and their subsidiaries, alleging a price fixing scheme for beef specifically. In a federal complaint, filed Friday in New York, McDonald's accused the companies of anticompetitive measures such as collectively limiting supply to boost prices and charge “illegally inflated” amounts.
This collusion caused the beef market to become “a monopoly in which direct purchasers were forced to buy at prices dictated by (the meat packers),” McDonald's suit reads — later noting that the injury it has sustained as one of those buyers is what “antitrust laws were designed to prevent.”
McDonald's alleges that the meat packers' conspiracy dates back nearly a decade, at least as early as January 2015, and continues today. Its suit argues these companies' actions violate the Sherman Act, a federal antitrust law.
Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday. But these companies have faced federal probes and allegations of price fixing before.
Lawsuits filed by grocery stores, ranchers, restaurants and wholesalers have piled up over the years. Some litigation is still pending, although meat packers and processers have opened their wallets in the past.
In 2022, for example, JBS agreed to a $52.5 million settlement in a similar beef price-fixing lawsuit. And Tyson agreed to pay $221.5 million back in 2021, after facing class-action claims that alleged purposely inflated chicken prices.
Such settlements did not include admissions of wrongdoing,
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