CHICAGO, IL – Cargill has agreed to pay $32.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accuses the meatpacking giant of conspiring with other companies to artificially raise the price of turkeys. The deal was filed in the Northern Illinois U.S. District Court and still needs to be approved by the court.
Cargill was the second company to settle the case, following Tyson Foods’s $4.62 million settlement in 2021.
The lawsuit accused Cargill and Tyson, plus other major producers like Butterball and Perdue Farms, of coordinating to intentionally reduce the U.S. turkey supply to raise consumer prices. A class action lawsuit was filed in 2019 that claims for years, the nation’s largest turkey producers illegally increased prices in a scheme that cost consumers millions of dollars and forced grocery stores to pay higher prices for deli meat and other products.
Agricultural Dive says the meat producers allegedly used data company Agri Stats to exchange sensitive information about production and pricing. The suit covers meatpacker activities from 2010-2017.

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The potential settlement comes in a case led by a collection of companies that buy large volumes of turkey products. They filed a lawsuit initially in 2019 against major turkey producers, which also includes a range of companies such as Butterball, Hillshire Brands, Hormel, Kraft Foods, Jennie-O Turkey, Perdue Farms and Prestage Farms. .
The turkey case is one of multiple lawsuits over the poultry and pork industry’s use of Indiana-based Agri Stats, which is also a defendant in the case. The lawsuits, which includes litigation against Agri Stats by the Department of Justice, allege companies were able to use Agri Stats reports to adjust their prices and production based on reports filed by competitors and compiled by Agri Stats.
