A federal class-action lawsuit alleging that a nationwide antitrust overpricing scheme by leading pork industry companies forced consumers to pay high prices for bacon, ham, hot dogs and other pork products was filed June 28 by law firm Hagens Berman.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, states that the price-fixing scheme has been carried out since 2009 by companies that include Tyson Foods, Hormel Foods and other major meat companies that control approximately 80% of the market.

Affected brands include, but are not limited to, Ball Park Franks, Bosco's, Craft Meats San Francisco, Hillshire Farm, Hormel, Jennie-O, Jimmy Dean, Lloyd's Barbeque, Nathan's Famous, SaraLee, Smithfield, SPAM, Steak-eze, Tastemakers and Tyson.

“Hardworking families across the nation strive to put food on the table, but little do they know, the game is rigged from the beginning: The largest food companies are secretly ensuring their dollar doesn’t go as far at the supermarket as it should,” said Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman, which is representing consumers in the lawsuit against the pork industry. “We’re seeking to hold Tyson, Hormel and others accountable for this nearly decade-long scheme to hog their share of profits.”

The lawsuit states that, along with Tyson and Hormel, Agri Stats Inc., Clemens Food Group, Indiana Packers Corp., JBS USA, Seaboard Foods LP, Smithfield Foods Inc. and Triumph Foods LLC “entered into a conspiracy from at least 2009 to the present to fix, raise, maintain and stabilize the price of pork.”

The suit reads, “The principal (but not exclusive) method by which defendants implemented and executed their conspiracy was by coordinating their output and limiting production with the intent and expected result of increasing pork prices in the United States. In furtherance of their conspiracy, defendants exchanged detailed, competitively sensitive and closely guarded non-public information about prices, capacity, sales volume and demand through their co-conspirator, Agri Stats.”

Beginning in 2009, the pork industry showed abnormal price movements, according to graphs in the lawsuit. Aggregate prices published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that the hog market year average price was at or below $50 every year between 1998 and 2009 before increasing to $76.30/lb. in 2015, an increase of more than 50%.

In 2009, according to the lawsuit, Agri Stats began supplying “highly sensitive ‘benchmarketing’ reports” to the pork industry companies. These reports, the lawsuit alleges, allowed competitors to compare their profits and performance, but unlike typical industry reports, Agri Stats’ reports showed detailed financial and production data from each player and customized the information in a way that “bears all of the hallmarks of the enforcement mechanism of a price-fixing scheme.”

On a weekly and monthly basis, Agri Stats provided the pork companies named in the lawsuit with current and forward-looking sensitive, non-public information including profits, costs, prices and slaughter information and regularly provided the keys to deciphering which data belonged to which producers. This allowed the companies to monitor each other’s production and control supply and price.

The lawsuit states that the defendant companies paid millions of dollars since 2009 to subscribe to the Agri Stats reports.

The Agri Stats reports were also placed at the center of a price-fixing lawsuit involving the broiler chicken industry that had the same outcome: to reduce strategic uncertainty in the market, changing the incentives of competitors to compete and inducing them to illegally cooperate to drive up prices. Agri Stats marketed its “benchmarketing” report subscription to the pork companies as a way to increase profit, saying that “the ultimate goal is increasing profitability.”

“Once Agri Stats got everyone in the pork industry to put their card on the table, there was no competition,” Berman said. “When you’re aware of every move your competition is making, the only step left is to form an alliance, and that’s exactly what happened here.”

“We believe this a class antitrust operation, with the sole purpose of increasing profits for these companies orchestrating the scheme,” he added.

With this information, the lawsuit said the pork industry’s top companies were kept in control, dominating the vast majority of the market.

Hormel Foods Corp. issued a statement in response to the newly filed lawsuit, saying, “Hormel Foods is a 127-year-old global branded food company with a reputation as one of the most respected companies in the food industry. We are confident that any allegations such as these are completely without merit. We intend to vigorously defend this lawsuit.”