A federal judge on Thursday dismissed antitrust lawsuits accusing several U.S. pork companies of conspiring to limit supply in the $20 billion-a-year market, in order to inflate prices and their own profits at the expense of consumers and other purchasers.
Chief Judge John Tunheim of the federal court in Minneapolis said the plaintiffs failed to show “parallel conduct” among the companies, whose combined U.S. market share exceeds 80%, to suggest they had conspired beginning in 2009 to fix prices.
The defendants included Hormel Foods Corp, the JBS USA unit of Brazil’s JBS SA, WH Group Ltd’s Smithfield Foods Inc, and Tyson Foods Inc, among others, as well as data provider Agri Stats Inc.
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