In announcing the settlement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche emphasized food affordability, stating the DOJ is “laser-focused on making everyday life affordable for all Americans.” 

On May 7, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (DOJ) filed a proposed settlement in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota to resolve claims against Agri Stats Inc. for unlawful information sharing among the nation’s largest meat processors. The settlement—joined by the attorneys general of California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah—aims to dismantle what the government alleges was a decadeslong practice of exchanging competitively sensitive pricing, output and cost data among rival broiler chicken, pork and turkey processors. Stakeholders across the agricultural supply chain—from poultry integrators and hog producers to livestock feed companies and meat buyers—should take note of the proposed resolution of this enforcement action.

Background

Agri Stats, headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is a data-sharing and consulting company that collects nonpublic information on prices, output and costs directly from meat processors’ accounting systems, then standardizes that data and redistributes it back to the processors in granular detail through reports and in-person meetings. Critically, Agri Stats and participating processors historically refused to make this information available to meat buyers such as restaurants, grocery stores and food distributors. As acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed A. Assefi stated, “When companies decide certain information is too sensitive to share with the broader market, but not too sensitive to share with their closest competitors, that is a significant red flag that competition is being harmed.” The government alleges this one-sided information exchange reduced competition and enabled systematic price increases and coordinated output decisions.

The case originated with a complaint filed on September 28, 2023, joined by the six plaintiff states in November 2023, and the proposed final judgment resolves the matter without trial or any admission by any party. The proposed consent decree remains subject to court approval. The process includes a 60-day public comment period, during which third parties may submit written comments to the DOJ, which must then be published in the Federal Register along with the government’s responses before the court enters a final judgment.

Key Terms of the Proposed Settlement

If approved by the court, the proposed settlement will require Agri Stats to cease offering its sales report books in their current forms and stop reporting any nonpublic sales data to competing processors unless it meets certain criteria. For instance, going forward Agri Stats may only report aggregated, statistical or quartile data subject to confidentiality restrictions. Additional prohibitions bar Agri Stats from reporting any contributor’s rankings, using “flags” that reveal the number of participants in a given metric, and revealing the identity of information contributors. Agri Stats must also stop reporting production, cost and labor data at the individual company or facility level.

Critically, the settlement requires Agri Stats to make its reports and manuals available for purchase by all interested domestic purchasers—including nonproduction-side buyers such as restaurants, grocery chains and food distributors—on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, at prices not exceeding the average charged to single-plant meat processors. All reported data must be at least 45 days old on average, and data reflecting production decisions must be at least 90 days old.

The settlement further requires Agri Stats to report to a DOJ-selected, court-appointed monitor for a seven-year term, establish a comprehensive antitrust compliance program with data security measures, whistleblower protections and mandatory violation reporting, and pay $350,000 to the plaintiff states.

Agri Stats’ subsidiary Express Markets Inc. (EMI) will be permitted to continue providing its price reports because they are less detailed and, importantly, are made available to all interested parties—not just meat processors. The EMI carveout illustrates the critical distinction the DOJ is drawing: Data-sharing arrangements that are equally accessible to buyers and sellers across the market may be less likely to raise antitrust concerns than those that selectively arm one side of a transaction with superior information.

Unless the court grants an extension, the final judgment will expire 10 years from the date of its entry, with possible early termination after seven years.

Implications for the Agriculture and Animal Health Industry

In announcing the settlement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche emphasized food affordability, stating the DOJ is “laser-focused on making everyday life affordable for all Americans.” Given this focus, companies in the agricultural sector should consult counsel to evaluate their information-sharing practices and carefully scrutinize any activity involving competitors.

For companies in the broiler chicken, pork and turkey sectors, the settlement serves as a roadmap for potential modifications to data-sharing arrangements that may reduce the likelihood of government interest in the company’s practices. Stakeholders should assess whether information being shared is competitively sensitive, whether it is available to all market participants (including buyers), and whether adequate safeguards exist to prevent the use of shared data to coordinate pricing or output decisions. In particular, companies should consider the following steps:

• Conduct a privilege-protected audit of all existing data-sharing arrangements, benchmarking subscriptions and industry consortium memberships to identify programs involving competitively sensitive pricing, cost or output data.
• Review contracts with data intermediaries and benchmarking services to determine whether shared data is sufficiently aggregated, anonymized and time-lagged (consistent with the 45-day and 90-day aging requirements imposed on Agri Stats) and whether reports are available to all market participants rather than selectively to competitors.
• Evaluate whether existing antitrust compliance programs adequately address data-sharing risks, including employee training on permissible benchmarking practices and internal reporting mechanisms for potential violations.

For More Information

If you have any questions about this Alert, please contact Driscoll R. Ugarte, Sean P. McConnell, Taylor Hertzler, any of the attorneys in our Life Sciences and Medical Technologies Industry Group, any of the attorneys in our Antitrust and Competition Group or the attorney in the firm with whom you are regularly in contact.

Disclaimer: This Alert has been prepared and published for informational purposes only and is not offered, nor should be construed, as legal advice. For more information, please see the firm's full disclaimer.