SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
"This is probably one of the top five food scandals of the 21st Century," a former grocery industry executive told More Perfect Union.
A former grocery executive told a progressive media outlet in a video released Tuesday that "people fucking need to go to jail" over a long-running scheme in which dominant U.S. meat industry players have used information provided by a little-known data analytics company to increase prices and pad their bottom lines.
"This is probably one of the top five food scandals of the 21st Century, and we can't underplay it," said Errol Schweizer, the former vice president of Whole Foods' grocery division. "People need to go to jail for this shit."
Schweizer's comments come at the start of a nine-minute video produced by More Perfect Union, which tells the story of how Indiana-based Agri Stats, the seemingly bland data firm, "built a network used by the nation's largest meat companies," including Tyson Foods, Hormel, and Cargill.
"Inside that network, America's meat barons share secret data," says More Perfect Union's Eric Gardner, the video's narrator. "It's alleged that Agri Stats organizes and then launders that information across the industry. Companies weaponize it, restricting output, manipulating the market, ultimately raising your prices."
Watch the full video:
Last September, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust suit against Agri Stats for allegedly "organizing and managing anticompetitive information exchanges among broiler chicken, pork, and turkey processors."
"The complaint alleges that Agri Stats violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by collecting, integrating, and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost, and output among competing meat processors," the DOJ said. "This conduct harms customers, including grocery stores and American families."
Less than two months later, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison led a bipartisan coalition of states in joining the Justice Department's lawsuit, which Agri Stats tried unsuccessfully to dismiss earlier this year.
Ellison told More Perfect Union that while an update to U.S. antitrust laws is long-overdue, "the Sherman Act, passed in 1890, is enough to stop Agri Stats from this illegal information-sharing that it's doing."
"I want to get to trial on this fast," said Ellison. "I believe we've got a great case, and I believe that what we're fighting for is a fair economy so that all Americans can aspire to prosperity."
More Perfect Union released its video days after Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris proposed a first-of-its-kind federal ban on price gouging in the food and grocery sectors and called for new rules to "make clear that big corporations can't unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits."
The meat industry was among the corporate forces that pushed back on Harris' proposed price gouging ban. Julie Anna Potts, president and CEO of the Meat Institute—a lobbying group for the meatpacking industry—accused the Harris campaign of "unfairly" targeting the meat and poultry industry.
While Potts said that "avian influenza, a shortage of beef cattle, and high input prices like energy and labor are all factors that determine prices at the meat case," Tyson, Cargill, JBS S.A., and National Beef are each facing lawsuits accusing them of illegally colluding to fix prices.
"Big Oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied their desperate pleas," said one campaigner.
For the third time in less than a year, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a key case against the fossil fuel industry to proceed in state court, delivering a win for the movement to make polluters pay for driving the climate emergency.
"This decision is another step forward for Minnesota's efforts to hold fossil fuel giants accountable for their climate lies and the harm they've caused," said Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles, pointing to the previous denials of other cases last April and May.
"Big Oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied their desperate pleas to overturn the unanimous rulings of every single court to consider this issue," he continued.
"It's time for these polluters to give up their failed arguments to escape state courts."
As legal leaders of dozens of U.S. states and municipalities have launched climate lawsuits in recent years, the fossil fuel industry has attempted to evade accountability by shifting the cases to federal court—a strategy that's proven unsuccessful.
Wiles argued that "after three strikes, it's time for these polluters to give up their failed arguments to escape state courts and prepare to face the evidence of their climate deception at trial."
The U.S. Supreme Court's Monday decision came in a case filed in 2020 by Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), based on the state's consumer protection laws.
"The fraud, deceptive advertising, and other violations of Minnesota state law and common law that the lawsuit shows they perpetrated have harmed Minnesotans' health and our state's environment, infrastructure, and economy," Ellison said at the time.
The justices declined Big Oil's request to review the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' March decision that the case belongs in state court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of former GOP President Donald Trump, would have taken the case, in line with his position last year.
"I appreciate the court's consideration and decision," Ellison said in a statement Monday. "It aligns with 25 federal court decisions across the country, all of which have found that cases like ours rest on these defendants' failures to warn and their campaigns of deception around their products' contributions to the climate crisis. The court's decision confirms these cases are properly filed in state courts."
"Taken together, the defendants' behavior has delayed the transition to alternative energy sources and a lower-carbon economy, resulting in dire impacts on Minnesota's environment and enormous costs to Minnesotans and the world," he stressed. "Now, the case can move forward in state court, where it was properly filed, and we can begin to hold these companies accountable for their wrongful conduct."
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for Fossil Free Media and the Make Polluters Pay campaign, declared Monday that "today's decision is an important step forward for accountability and justice."
"The Supreme Court has now laid out an unmistakable path forward," she added, "for not only Minnesota's consumer protection case against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and API, but the dozens of cases against the fossil fuel industry popping up across the county."
This post has been updated with comment from Keith Ellison.
Water protectors fighting to stop Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline expansion interrupted a Thursday evening speech by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge the Democrat's silence on the multi-billion-dollar project, which violates Anishinaabe treaty rights while endangering local ecosystems, Indigenous communities, and the global climate.
"What will you do about the frivolous charges brought against over 800 people drawing attention to Line 3's climate impacts and civil rights violations?"
--Water protector
"In 2015 at an anti-tar sands rally, you promised to stand with the First Nations brothers and sisters--that's a quote--and defend Mother Earth," one protester shouted out as he was removed from the St. Paul auditorium hosting a ceremony for the new dean of the Mitchell Hamline School of Law. "And yet you've been silent on Line 3... What is your plan? Are you going to take a stand?"
Another water protector asked, "What will you do about the frivolous charges brought against over 800 people drawing attention to Line 3's climate impacts and civil rights violations?"
Ellison, who was the keynote speaker, admonished the demonstrators but agreed to meet with them after the event.
In a video of a post-event exchange published by BLCK Press, Jaike Spotted-Wolf, a leader in the frontline Line 3 resistance group Camp Migizi, told Ellison that "two out of three tribes didn't approve" the pipeline, "and you guys went against treaty law, which is sovereign... you went above the treaty to approve that pipeline. And protesters have been violently arrested all summer long. What are your thoughts on that, as people are being sex-trafficked all along that pipeline?"
Camp Migizi founder Taysha Martineau showed Ellison a photo of their three daughters and asked, "Which one are the Enbridge workers going to target? Which one is going to be raped before the age of 15, which one is going to go missing, which one is going to get murdered, and which one are they going to attempt to sex traffic?"
As Ellison stood in sullen silence, Martineau continued: "This is an honest conversation that Indigenous women wake up every single day terrified about... The [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women] issue is always going to be there."
"I'm supposed to be able to trust you," they told Ellison, who replied, "I didn't ask you to trust me."
"I've said I don't like Line 3," Ellison said. "If I had any authority to do anything about Line 3, I would."
The attorney general assured the protesters that he would look into sex trafficking and other abuses perpetrated by Line 3 workers.
In 2015, then-Congressman Ellison (D-Minn.) held up a sign reading "I Will Act on Climate" at a Tar Sands Resistance March in St. Paul, and declared, "We've got to stand together; we've got to say no to... fossil fuels; we've got to defend Mother Earth."
However, according to anti-Line 3 campaigners, Ellison has not taken a public stance on the project since being elected attorney general.
The administration of President Joe Biden--who earlier this month called the climate emergency a "code red" crisis--was accused in June of a "horrible and unconscionable betrayal" of his climate promises after filing a legal brief backing the federal government's 2020 approval of the Line 3 project under former President Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, after Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz kicked off Minnesota Climate Week by vowing to "recommit to combating climate change," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted, "Let's #StopLine3."
The Indigenous-led frontline group Honor the Earth denounced Walz for what they called his meaningless climate proclamation while imploring the governor to "take real action."