HOUSTON, TEXAS — Several US turkey producers face price-fixing allegations from Carina Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of litigation funder Burford Capital that holds various assets from food distributor Sysco Corp.

According to Carina’s complaint, filed on July 21 with the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas – Houston Division, the producers “fixed, raised, stabilized or maintained the prices of turkey sold in the United States beginning around 2008 and continuing at least through 2016.” The plaintiff alleges that during the conspiracy period, Sysco purchased hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of turkey at artificially raised prices.

Carina seeks compensation for any damages or costs incurred by Sysco as a result of the alleged conspiracy.

The defendants in question include Agri Stats Inc., Butterball LLC, Cargill Inc., Cooper Farms Inc., Farbest Foods Inc., Foster Farms LLC, Hormel Foods Corp., House of Raeford Farms Inc., Perdue Farms Inc., Prestage Farms Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. From 2008-2018, the defendants composed around 70% of the wholesale turkey market.

The lawsuit alleges Agri Stats and its subsidiary Express Markets Inc. provided confidential reports on turkey producers so that the companies were able to raise prices that were still lower than their competitors. The competitive data was not publicly available, but companies could purchase a subscription to Agri Stats to access the information.

The complaint goes on to say that from 2008-2009 and 2012-2013, major US turkey producers cut back supply in order raise prices from 2010-2011 and 2014-2015, respectively.

“The turkey industry also has multiple industry characteristics which facilitate collusion, such as numerous and repeated opportunities (e.g., trade association meetings) for defendants to conspire, a high level of vertical integration, consolidation and concentration, barriers to entry preventing new entrants into the market, inelastic demand for turkey, and homogeneity of turkey as a product,” the lawsuit said.