From the WSJ:
Chicken processor Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. said it has agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve price-fixing charges, and will pay a fine of $110.5 million.
A guilty plea by Pilgrim’s, the second-largest U.S. chicken processor by sales, will make it the first company to admit in court to what prosecutors have alleged was a roughly seven-year effort across much of the U.S. chicken industry to inflate prices. That coordination pushed up poultry prices paid by fast-food chains and other chicken buyers, prosecutors alleged....
Pilgrim’s was charged with price fixing and bid rigging in a criminal-information document the Justice Department filed late Tuesday in federal court in Colorado. Prosecutors accused the company of coordinating with other parties to suppress competition in the chicken market from 2012 to early 2019....
Pilgrim’s, which is majority-owned by Brazilian meat conglomerate JBS SA, has been at the center of the U.S. government’s wide-ranging probe of the $65 billion U.S. chicken industry. The Justice Department’s initial charges in June targeted Jayson Penn, then chief executive of Pilgrim’s, as well as a former Pilgrim’s sales manager and two executives of a rival chicken company. Mr. Penn and the other defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Current and former employees of other chicken companies, including Tyson Foods Inc., Claxton Poultry Farms, Perdue Farms Inc. and Koch Foods Inc. have also been charged.