SEATTLE — House of Raeford Farms agreed to pay $460,000 in a settlement of a chicken price-fixing lawsuit with Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

The attorney general began his lawsuit against the House of Raeford and 18 other chicken producers in 2021. He alleged that the companies, which account for 95% of the broiler market, conspired to manipulate prices by restraining production and exchanging competitively sensitive information.

House of Raeford Farms holds a single-digit percentage of the national market share for chicken, according to a press release from Ferguson’s office.

The company denied any wrongdoing but reached a settlement with Ferguson.

“House of Raeford Farms denies and has consistently denied that it violates or violated any federal or state antitrust or business practices laws,” House of Raeford Farms said in a statement. “The consent decree specifically stipulates in Paragraph 2.2 that the company denies all allegations and denies that it engaged in any wrongdoing.”

Only two more chicken producers are pending a resolution with the attorney general. Wayne-Sanderson Farms and Foster Farms are scheduled for trial in October.

With the $35.5 million recovered from the 15 other companies named in the lawsuit, the attorney’s general office said it distributed the funds to over 400,000 Washington households in December 2023.

According to the allegations against the companies, the producers drove up the price of chicken since 2008 through a conspiracy to inflate and manipulate the market.

A trial against the three remaining producers — Foster Farms, Wayne-Sanderson Farms and House of Raeford Farms — is scheduled for October 2024.