Dutch Rabobank Escapes US Chicken Cartel Case

Cooperative Rabobank UA dodged antitrust claims over its alleged role in an industry wide scheme to fix broiler chicken prices, when a federal judge in Chicago dismissed allegations that the Dutch bank knowingly facilitated illegal data sharing among leading poultry processors, reported Bloomberg Law.

Though the processors’ correspondence with Rabobank raises “the specter” that the bank served as “a communications conduit,” basing liability on exchanges of “entirely ambiguous” emails between leading chicken processors and a top agricultural lender would require “too many inferences,” Judge Thomas M. Durkin said.

Poultry processors allegedly used a data-sharing service, AgriStats, to monitor one another and identify deviants in the conspiracy. And the allegations extended beyond chicken. Numerous private suits have accused pork and turkey processors of conspiring together to raise prices with the help of AgriStats. Other suits claim chicken processors used AgriStats to hold down wages for workers and prices paid to farmers.

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