Rancher Group, Ranchers File Historic Lawsuit Against Big 4 Beef Packers

Chicago – April 23, 2019 – Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP (“Scott+Scott”), a national antitrust and securities litigation firm, along with Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel LLP (“Cafferty Clobes”), have filed a class action lawsuit in federal district court in Chicago on behalf of R-CALF USA and four cattle-feeding ranchers from Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming. The suit alleges the nation’s four largest beef packers violated U.S. antitrust laws, the Packers and Stockyards Act, and the Commodity Exchange Act by unlawfully depressing the prices paid to American ranchers.

The complaint was filed against Tyson Foods, Inc., JBS S.A., Cargill, Inc., and National Beef Packing Company, LLC, and certain of their affiliates (the “Big 4”), who collectively purchase and process over 80% of the U.S.’s fed cattle-that is, cattle raised specifically for beef production-annually. It alleges that from at least January 1, 2015 through the present, the Big 4 packers conspired to depress the price of fed cattle they purchased from American ranchers, thereby inflating their own margins and profits.

The class action lawsuit seeks to recover the losses suffered by two classes believed harmed by the Big 4’s alleged conduct. The first class includes cattle producers who sold fed cattle to any one of the Big 4 from January 2015 to the present. The second class consists of traders who transacted live cattle futures or options contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (“CME”) from January 2015 to the present. The complaint, which is supported by witness accounts, including a former employee of one of the Big 4, trade records, and economic evidence, alleges that the Big 4 conspired to artificially depress fed cattle prices through various means, including:

• collectively reducing their slaughter volumes and purchases of cattle sold on the cash market in order to create a glut of slaughter-weight fed cattle;
• manipulating the cash cattle trade to reduce price competition amongst themselves, including by enforcing an antiquated queuing convention through threats of boycott and agreeing to conduct substantially all their weekly cash market purchases during a narrow 30-minute window on Fridays;
• transporting cattle over uneconomically long distances, including from Canada and Mexico, in order to depress U.S. fed cattle prices; and
• deliberating closing slaughter plants to ensure the underutilization of available U.S. beef packing capacity.

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