Tyson Foods has agreed to pay $48 million to settle allegations that it participated in a years-long conspiracy to fix the prices of pork products sold in the United States. The settlement is part of a larger wave of antitrust litigation targeting major meat processors — including Smithfield Foods, JBS, and Hormel — accused of coordinating to inflate pork prices at the expense of consumers, grocery stores, and food distributors. Claims are now being accepted.
Status: Settlement Approved — Claims Being Accepted
What Was the Price-Fixing Scheme?
The lawsuit alleged that major pork processors conspired to reduce the supply of hogs being raised for slaughter, which artificially drove up the wholesale price of pork. According to the plaintiffs, the companies shared confidential production data through a third-party reporting service and coordinated their decisions about how many hogs to breed and process. By collectively restricting supply, the companies could keep pork prices higher than what a competitive market would produce.
The conspiracy allegedly ran from at least January 2009 through the present, affecting the prices consumers paid for bacon, pork chops, sausage, ham, and other pork products at grocery stores, restaurants, and wholesale distributors across the country.
Tyson is not the only company that has settled. Smithfield Foods settled for $83 million, JBS for $20 million, and Hormel for $12.75 million. The combined settlements from the pork price-fixing litigation now total hundreds of millions of dollars, with some defendants still facing trial.
Who Is Eligible?
The settlement class is divided into two groups. Direct purchasers — companies that bought pork products directly from the defendant processors — have their own settlement track. Indirect purchasers — consumers and businesses that bought pork at retail — are covered under a separate class in states with laws that allow indirect purchaser claims.
If you bought pork products at a grocery store, warehouse club, or restaurant in the United States during the relevant period, you may be part of the indirect purchaser class. The exact eligibility rules and claim requirements depend on which state you live in and how the settlement administrator processes claims.
The Bigger Picture: Meat Industry Antitrust
The pork price-fixing cases are part of a broader pattern of antitrust enforcement in the meat industry. Similar lawsuits have targeted chicken processors (resulting in billions of dollars in settlements) and beef processors (still in litigation). The common thread in all of these cases is the allegation that a handful of massive corporations control so much of the American meat supply that they can manipulate prices by coordinating production decisions.
For consumers, these settlements represent a partial recovery for years of inflated prices. While individual payments from meat price-fixing settlements tend to be modest, the cumulative effect of billions of dollars in legal liability has put meaningful pressure on the industry to change its practices.
Check your eligibility for the Tyson pork price-fixing settlement on OpenClassActions.com.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The information presented is based on publicly available court records and news reports. Written by Steve Levine for OpenClassActions.org.