As interesting as the list of Agri Stats members is, the groups that *don't* get to see Agri Stats' "books" is just as important: "farmers, workers, or retailers." Agri Stats also offers consulting services to its members. As an exec at pork processor Smithfield put it, Agri Stats advice boils down to four words "Just raise your price."
Agri Stats ranks its members based on how high their prices are - they literally publish a league table with the highest prices at the top.
16/
Meat packers pay bonuses to their execs based on how high the company's rank is on that table. Agri Stats meets with its members throughout the year to discuss "price opportunities" and to advise them to "exercise restraint" by restricting supply to keep prices up. When one Agri Stats member considered leaving the cartel, Agri Stats wooed them back by telling them how to make an additional $100k by raising bacon prices.
17/
The reason Dayen is writing about Agri Stats now is that the #DoJ #AntitrustDivision has brought an antitrust suit against them. This is part of a *wave* of antitrust actions brought by Biden's DoJ and #FTC, who, along with his #NLRB, are shaping up to be the most pugnacious, public-interest force against corporate power since the Reagan administration:
https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/29124-doj-sues-agri-stats-for-complicity-in-meat-market-manipulation
All this enforcement isn't a coincidence.
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It comes from an explicit rejection of neoliberalism's core tenets: inequality reflects merit, monopolies are efficient, and government can't do anything. In Biden's DoJ, FTC and NLRB, they're partying like it's 1979:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby
What's amazing about the Agri Stats conspiracy to raise prices is that it's been going *since the Reagan administration*.
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It's a smoking gun proof that "consumer welfare" *never* cared about price-fixing and robbing the public (can a gun still smoke after 40 years?). There was *never* a time when consumer welfare antitrust cared about consumer welfare. It was always and forever a front for "a conspiracy against the publick," a "contrivance to raise prices."
Big Meat has been robbing America for two generations. Some of those stolen funds were used to corrupt our political process.
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@b92dcc07 An interesting thing happened as a family of grocers lost their distribution network when their brand franchise supplier decided that knock-off auto supplies was a more profitable business model. They reverted to old school and sourced locally. They long had a clientele that called on them as butchers- they had always cut their own chicken and beef and pork. They built their own produce greenhouse in a lot next door to their supermarket. They eked out a few more years.
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