McDonald’s accuses meat packers of cartel and price fixing, suing over beef costs.
The case pits the world’s largest fast food chain against Cargill, JBS, National Beef Packing, Tyson Foods and other leading meatpacking and processing companies for allegedly conspiring for years to limit beef supplies while boosting their profits. while forcing the fast food giant to pay artificially higher prices.
McDonald’s: Why it “sees” a conspiracy
As reported by Reuters and Financial Times, McDonald’s said in a lawsuit filed on Friday in federal court in Brooklyn that meatpacking companies collectively cut production to drive up industry prices as early as 2015.
The lawsuit is the latest to accuse the world’s largest meatpacking companies of violating US antitrust laws by coordinating the prices they pay for cattle and slaughter volume.
“Only if the meat companies conspired would they expect to benefit by depressing beef prices and purchases because they would know that their collusion would protect them from the dynamics of a competitive market,” McDonald’s says in its lawsuit.
The other side
The meat producers have denied any wrongdoing in related cases that have been consolidated into one in a Minnesota federal court. Plaintiffs in those cases include BJ’s Wholesale, Sodexo, Target and Aldi.
While at the same time they are facing lawsuits from American consumers, cattle producers and others, who are seeking class action status and monetary damages in the Minnesota lawsuit.
Cattle producers who said they sold animals directly to meat packers for slaughter said they lost billions from the alleged scheme, court records show.
What McDonald’s wants
McDonald’s has 13,000 branded restaurants in the U.S., which is just a fraction of its global footprint of 39,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries.
Her claims include unspecified monetary damages and an injunction to end the alleged price-fixing conspiracy.
U.S. District Attorney John Tunheim in Minneapolis is overseeing the coordinated beef antitrust lawsuit.
In the first settlement, JBS said it would pay $52.5 million in 2022 to resolve some of the claims of the class action’s buyers.
Source OT
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