Pilgrim’s Pride included in Bob Evans Farms’ antitrust lawsuit

GREELEY and CHICAGO — Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. (Nasdaq: PPC) is among several large-scale chicken producers accused by Bob Evans Farms Inc. of inflating poultry prices over the last decade.

In an antitrust lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago Friday, Bob Evans claims that Pilgrim’s and several other meatpacking companies agreed to artificially raise the price of chicken between 2008 and 2017 by, among other tactics, agreeing to coordinate bids to buyers and restrict the supply of birds for sale.

Bob Evans Farms is a subsidiary of Post Holdings Inc. (NYSE: POST), the St. Louis-based maker of multiple cereal and packaged food brands.

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The suit also names meatpacking giants such as Tyson Foods Inc. (NYSE: TSN), Sanderson Farms Inc. (Nasdaq: SAFM) and Perdue Farms Inc. as defendants.

In particular, the suit claims that the largest players in the industry coordinated their self-reported price offers to the Georgia Dock, a weekly price index compiled by the Georgia Department of Agriculture that was shut down in 2016 after manipulation was discovered.

A replacement index, the Georgia Premium Poultry Price Index, was created in 2017 to replace the Georgia Dock as a more transparent benchmark, but ended that same year after chicken companies stopped sending enough data to make it a viable reflection of the market.

A Pilgrim’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

Pilgrim’s has been the target of several government-led legal queries over industry-level pricing practices as of late. It is among multiple chicken producers involved in an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation that began last fall, and CEO Jayson Penn is on leave and currently awaiting trial after a grand jury indicted him on price-fixing charges last June.