A company that already filed a turkey price-fixing claim in 2025 is not covered by the $93,575,000 now being distributed. The earlier Cargill and Tyson round used a broader definition of “turkey” than the class the court certified in January 2025, so every claim form filed then was built on the wrong product definition for the six settlements paying out now. A new, pre-printed claim form is required, and it is due October 30, 2026.
Status: Claims open | Claim and objection deadline October 30, 2026 | No opt-out available | $93,575,000 across six settlements
This Is a Business Claim, Not a Grocery Receipt
The first thing to settle is who this is for, because the headline number attracts the wrong readers every November. The certified class covers direct purchasers — the wholesalers, distributors and large retail chains that bought turkey straight from a processor. A household that bought a bird at a supermarket bought it from the retailer, which makes the purchase indirect, and indirect consumer purchases are not in this class.
The class is small and the administrator knows who is in it: notice is going by mail to roughly 3,357 potential class members and by email to about 351, backed by four weeks of banner advertising in Supermarket News and Nation’s Restaurant News to reach anyone the lists missed.
There is a second track in the same litigation for commercial and institutional buyers — restaurants, caterers, cafeterias, hospitals and school kitchens that bought through a broadline distributor for their own food preparation. That class has its own settlements, its own deadlines and its own website at TurkeyCommercialCase.com. Neither track reaches a household shopper. There is no consumer claim to file in this case.
What the Certified Class Actually Covers
The court certified the class on January 22, 2025: all persons and entities that directly purchased fresh or frozen, uncooked turkey breast, ground turkey or whole bird turkey products from the defendants in the United States between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2016.
The product definition is narrower than it sounds, and the exclusions decide most eligibility questions. Every category excludes organic turkey, turkey raised with no antibiotics ever or labeled antibiotic-free, and cooked or ready-to-eat turkey. On top of that:
- Turkey breast excludes breasts used to make ground turkey, and breast tenderloins.
- Ground turkey excludes ground turkey made from breasts or from wings, and excludes burgers, sausages and patties.
A buyer whose purchases over those seven years were entirely organic, antibiotic-free or further-processed has nothing in this class, however large the invoices were.
The processors named over the life of the case are Butterball; Cargill and Cargill Meat Solutions; Cooper Farms; Farbest Foods; Foster Farms and Foster Poultry Farms; Hormel Foods and Jennie-O Turkey Store; House of Raeford Farms; Perdue Farms and Perdue Foods; Prestage Farms; and Tyson Foods with Tyson Fresh Meats, Tyson Prepared Foods and The Hillshire Brands Company. Agri Stats, Inc. is also a defendant. The Kraft defendants were dismissed in 2020.
Six Settlements, One Claim Form
The $93,575,000 in this claims process is six separate settlements that the court is administering together:
| Butterball | $34,000,000 |
| Hormel Foods and Jennie-O Turkey Store | $37,500,000 |
| Prestage Farms | $15,000,000 |
| House of Raeford | $3,700,000 |
| Cooper Farms | $1,687,500 |
| Farbest Foods | $1,687,500 |
Payments are pro rata, scaled to the dollar value of each class member’s qualifying direct purchases during the class period. No per-claimant figure has been published, and none can be estimated responsibly before the administrator knows how much of the class files. Court-awarded attorneys’ fees, litigation expenses, notice and administration costs and service awards come out of the pool first. Co-lead counsel are making a second fee request of up to one third including interest and net of costs, plus service awards of up to $25,000 per class representative; counsel were also permitted to draw up to $250,000 from each fund for notice and administration. The court decides all of it at or after the fairness hearing and can award less.
Why Tyson and Cargill Are Not In This Round
This is the part that costs companies money, so it is worth being precise about. The Tyson ($4,650,000) and Cargill ($32,500,000) settlements were reached before the court certified the litigation class. Each defined its own settlement class around a broader definition of turkey, and each ran its own claim process, with claim, exclusion and objection deadlines that all fell on April 21, 2025 and a fairness hearing on June 18, 2025. That process is closed.
Those two funds are also not being distributed yet. Both are held pending a Seventh Circuit appeal of the Cargill final approval order, and they will be distributed separately under the already-completed process and the broader settlement-class definition. The interim fee award, expense reimbursement and service awards granted from those funds in July 2025 are likewise unpaid while that appeal runs.
The practical consequence is a single sentence: a 2025 Cargill-round claim form has no effect on the six settlements paying out now, and a company that assumes otherwise will be left out.
There Is No Opt-Out This Time
October 30, 2026 is a claim and objection deadline. It is not an exclusion deadline, because exclusion is not available.
The court certified the class in January 2025, class members were told their requests for exclusion were due by May 22, 2025, and the August 26, 2026 preliminary approval order expressly declines to reopen that window. The court’s stated reasoning is worth knowing: allowing class members to exclude themselves after a summary judgment ruling would let them decide based on how the ruling came out. A class member who does nothing by October 30 stays bound by the judgment and gives up the payment.
The Claim Form Does Your Arithmetic For You
A claim form is required, but the burden is lighter than most business claims because the administrator has already run the numbers. Each class member receives a pre-printed claim form with its purchases already calculated under the certified class definition, derived from the transaction data the defendants produced in the litigation. A company that agrees with the figure confirms it and files — no invoices, no reconstruction.
A company that disagrees uses the Purchase Audit Request Form, which the court approved alongside the claim form specifically so class members can supplement or challenge their pre-printed amounts. That is where records come in: invoices and receipts showing the product, the seller, the date and the net purchase amount. Because the class period closed at the end of 2016, those are archived accounts-payable files, and pulling them is the slow part of this. A buyer that suspects its pre-printed figure is low should start that retrieval now, not in the last week of October.
A company that bought under more than one legal name, or that has since been acquired or merged, should say so on the claim form rather than filing twice — a corporate family’s purchases are generally claimed together. And because the case settled in stages, a buyer that purchased from several processors across the seven-year period can have a stake in more than one fund, which is the practical reason to check purchase records against the whole defendant list rather than only the two names in the current notice.
The Court-Ordered Schedule
| September 15, 2026 | Administrator commences direct mail and email notice and begins the publication notice plan. |
| October 16, 2026 | Co-lead counsel file the motion for attorneys’ fees, expenses and service awards. |
| October 30, 2026 | Last day to file a claim form, to object to any settlement, to object to the fee motion, or to file a notice of appearance at the fairness hearing. |
| November 10, 2026 | Motion for final approval filed; settling defendants may respond to objections. |
| November 24, 2026 | Fairness hearing on the Agri Stats, House of Raeford, Prestage, Foster Farms, Perdue, Hormel/Jennie-O and Butterball settlements. |
A class member who wants to object to the fee request has the fortnight between October 16 and October 30 to read it. The order allows the fairness hearing to be postponed, adjourned, continued or held remotely; any change is posted on the official settlement website and no further notice is sent to the class.
How the Case Got Here
The complaint, filed in December 2019, alleges that the turkey processors exchanged detailed, current and forward-looking production and sales information through Agri Stats, a subscription service that collected data from processors, standardized it and returned monthly reports comparing each participant to the rest of the industry. The plaintiffs allege those reports were not an aggregated public benchmark but plant-level detail competitors could decode, available only to processors that contributed their own data and never to the buyers on the other side of the market. The alleged effect was restrained supply and higher prices; the claim is brought under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
The case narrowed twice, in opposite directions. In October 2020 the court allowed it to proceed but held the plaintiffs had adequately alleged a violation only under a rule-of-reason analysis rather than a per se theory. Then in July 2026, on summary judgment, the court went the other way on the legal theory: it entered judgment for the direct purchasers on their per se conspiracy claims against Prestage, Hormel/Jennie-O and Butterball while dismissing the rule-of-reason claims, and entered judgment for Foster Farms and Perdue on the claims against them.
That ruling is why the remaining defendants settled within weeks and why the trial set for October 2026 never happened. Every settling defendant denies the allegations and denies any liability or wrongdoing. The settlements were reached without any admission, and no court has found that any defendant violated the antitrust laws.
Where Leftover Money Goes
The preliminary approval order settles one question that usually requires a second round of notice. If money remains after distribution and further redistribution would not be cost-effective, the court pre-approved four destinations: the American Antitrust Institute; No Kid Hungry; an equal split among the attorneys general of California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — the six states that sued Agri Stats separately — or escheat to the State of Illinois. The court reserved the actual decision but approved disclosing the options now, so class members will not receive another mailing about it.
What Happens Next
At the November 24, 2026 fairness hearing the court decides whether the settlements are fair, reasonable and adequate and rules on the fee, expense and service-award requests. Timely objections are heard there.
Payment comes after that, and not immediately. The distribution plan has not been filed — the order contemplates a later motion for approval of distribution once the claims process has run and the administrator knows what was claimed. No payment date has been announced.
How to File
Direct purchaser claims go through the official settlement website, TurkeyLitigation.com, run by the court-appointed administrator, A.B. Data, Ltd. The site hosts the notices, the claim form, the settlement agreements and the court orders for each settlement in the direct purchaser track, and it is where any change to the fairness hearing date is posted. Commercial and institutional buyers that purchased indirectly file at TurkeyCommercialCase.com instead, under that class’s own deadlines.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I file if I bought a turkey at the grocery store?
No. The class covers direct purchasers only — businesses that bought turkey straight from a processor or an alleged co-conspirator, such as grocery wholesalers, distributors and large retail chains. A household that bought a bird at a supermarket bought it indirectly, from the retailer, and is outside the class. A separate track in the same case covers commercial and institutional buyers that purchased indirectly for use in commercial food preparation, with its own website and deadlines.
I filed a claim in the Cargill and Tyson round. Am I covered?
No. A new claim form is required, and this is the most common way a class member loses money here. The Cargill and Tyson settlements were reached before the court certified the litigation class and used a broader definition of turkey, so every claim form filed in that round was built on the wrong product definition for these six settlements. The court approved a fresh, pre-printed claim form for this round, due October 30, 2026.
What counts as turkey for the certified class?
Fresh or frozen, uncooked turkey breast, ground turkey and whole bird turkey products bought directly from the defendants between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2016. Every category excludes organic turkey, turkey raised with no antibiotics ever or antibiotic-free, and cooked or ready-to-eat turkey. Turkey breast also excludes breasts used to make ground turkey and breast tenderloins; ground turkey also excludes ground turkey made from breasts or wings, and burgers, sausages and patties.
Do I need invoices to file?
Only if you disagree with the figure on your form. The administrator mails a pre-printed claim form with your purchases already calculated from the transaction data the defendants produced, and a company that accepts that figure simply confirms and files. A company that wants to supplement or challenge the amount uses the Purchase Audit Request Form, and that is where invoices showing the product, the seller, the date and the net purchase amount are needed.
Can I opt out of the turkey settlements?
No. The court certified the class on January 22, 2025 and the exclusion deadline passed on May 22, 2025. The August 26, 2026 preliminary approval order expressly declines to reopen that window, reasoning that allowing exclusions after a summary judgment ruling would let class members choose based on how the ruling came out. October 30, 2026 is a claim and objection deadline only.
How much will a claim pay?
No per-claimant estimate has been published and the distribution plan has not been filed. Payments are pro rata, scaled to each class member’s qualifying purchases, out of what remains of the $93,575,000 after court-awarded attorneys’ fees of up to one third, litigation expenses, notice and administration costs and service awards of up to $25,000 per class representative. Your pre-printed claim form shows the purchase figure your share is calculated from.
Has anyone been found guilty of fixing turkey prices?
No defendant has been found liable to the class, and the settlements resolve the claims without any admission of wrongdoing. The litigation did get further than most: in July 2026 the court entered summary judgment for the direct purchasers on their per se conspiracy claims against Prestage, Hormel/Jennie-O and Butterball, while dismissing the rule-of-reason claims and entering judgment for Foster Farms and Perdue. The remaining defendants settled within weeks and the October 2026 trial never happened.
Sources
- Order granting preliminary approval of the Butterball and Hormel/Jennie-O settlements, approving the notice plan and setting the schedule, entered August 26, 2026 — In re Turkey Antitrust Litigation, No. 1:19-cv-08318, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Hon. Sunil R. Harjani).
- Direct purchaser plaintiffs’ memoranda in support of preliminary approval of the Butterball settlement (filed August 21, 2026) and the Hormel and Jennie-O settlement (filed August 14, 2026), including the claims-process breakdown and the explanation of why a new claim form is required.
- Class action complaint filed December 19, 2019 and the October 19, 2020 memorandum opinion on the motions to dismiss in the same docket.
- Official direct purchaser settlement website, TurkeyLitigation.com, and the commercial and institutional indirect purchaser website, TurkeyCommercialCase.com, both administered by A.B. Data, Ltd.
- OpenClassActions.com — Turkey Settlement: $93.5M Claim Form Opens September 15.
Source and credit: the settlement terms, deadlines and benefit tiers described above are drawn from our sister site’s reporting — OpenClassActions.com: Turkey Settlement: $93.5M Claim Form Opens September 15 — which tracks this case against the court-approved notice and the official settlement website and is updated as the court rules.
Legal Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. OpenClassActions.org is a consumer news site, not a law firm and not the settlement administrator, and is not affiliated with any party to the case described. The allegations are allegations; the defendants deny wrongdoing and no court has decided the merits. Deadlines, benefit amounts and payment timing can change as the court and the administrator act, so confirm current status on the official settlement website. You never need to pay anyone to file a claim or to receive a settlement payment.