Tyson Foods to pay WA $10.5M in chicken price-fixing settlement

The biggest producer of chicken products in our nation is paying the state $10.5 million.

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s Office reached a settlement with Tyson Foods — one of 19 chicken companies the state is going after for illegal price-fixing.

“The lawsuit asserts these 19 companies schemed amongst each other to inflate and manipulate prices, rig contract bids, illegally exchange information, and coordinate to reduce supply … this conspiracy violated the anti-trust provisions of the Washington State Consumer Protection Act,” Ferguson said.

While inflation has led to higher prices at the grocery store, price-fixing is something different. Price-fixing, Ferguson said, is when companies come to secret agreements to set prices of a product, rather than letting the free market dictate those numbers.

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“Prices fluctuate naturally through the market — that’s okay, that’s part of competition,” he said. “What we don’t want to see is prices artificially high because folks are acting illegally.”

So far, the state has reached settlements with three companies, which together represent about a quarter of the chicken products sold in the U.S. In total, the three settlements add up to $11.7 million. There are still 16 other companies that have not reached settlements.

“Rather than compete with their competitors — which, by the way, is the American way, that’s how our system is supposed to work, competition — they conspired with their competitors to to cheat hardworking Washington families into collectively overpaying millions of dollars,” Ferguson said.

The 19 companies produce nearly all of the chicken sold in the United States — about 95% of what shows up in grocery store aisles and restaurant menus. Unless you are a vegetarian, Ferguson said you have likely felt the impacts of these price-fixing tactics.

“If you bought chicken in the recent past, you paid more for that chicken than you should have because of the illegal conduct of all 19 of these companies,” Ferguson said. He continued, “The chicken these companies produce goes into everything from the raw chicken breast you get at the grocery store to the frozen nuggets you buy in the freezer aisle to the chicken sandwich you get at a fast-food restaurant.”

Tyson produces about 20% of the chicken products sold in the U.S. The company told KIRO Newsradio in an email, “While Tyson does not admit any liability as part of the settlement, it believes that the settlement was in the best interests of the company and its shareholders in order to avoid the uncertainty, expense and burden of protracted litigation.”

Ferguson says the money from the settlements will be returned to the consumers who unfairly overpaid for their chicken. It is not yet clear how this would happen, but a person would likely have to show that they purchased chicken, and then the state would send them a check.

“The plan is to take the money that we receive from all these cases that are still ongoing, and return those in a form that makes sense to Washingtonians,” Ferguson said.

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