Wayne-Sanderson Farms filed its own motion seeking clarity and relief from the court that its participation in the industry-standard Agri Stats subscription service is lawful and permitted.
A press release from Wayne-Sanderson Farms said the filing was necessary and done in response to “unprecedented actions” taken by the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
At 2:15 a.m. on January 18, the division filed a motion seeking to declare the Wayne-Sanderson Farms in violation of a consent decree and to force the company to abandon its longstanding use of the industry benchmarking service Agri Stats. Wayne-Sanderson Farms further asserted that the DOJ division is separately litigating against Agri Stats in a federal district court in Minnesota, seeking to permanently shut down Agri Stats' business and, according to the company's filings, this latest action is a backdoor attempt by the division to use its consent decree with Wayne-Sanderson to accomplish that same goal.
The consent decree was entered into between Wayne-Sanderson Farms and the DOJ in 2022 upon the merger of Wayne Farms and Sanderson Farms, when the DOJ compelled the companies to enter into a settlement of a private class action lawsuit about employee wages – which the company says is wholly unrelated to any issues surrounding the merger – in order to allow the merger to clear the DOJ's review process.
In addition to paying private class action plaintiffs $69.8 million, the consent decree required the newly combined company to endure a 10-year monitorship conducted by private attorneys called monitors working at the direction of the division, but working solely at the cost of the company.
"The division's filing is premature and unwarranted, and a result of a poorly modeled and broken monitorship," said Jeremy Kilburn, chief legal and compliance officer of Wayne-Sanderson Farms.
In its own filing with the court, the company demonstrates that it has not violated the consent decree. Instead, the filing explains the painstaking efforts the company has undertaken to engage with the monitors and the division over the last several months to identify and resolve potential issues relating to its long-standing and well-known subscription to Agri Stats, Kilburn noted. Until the division's 2:15 a.m. filing a mere two days before the new presidential administration entered office, neither the monitors nor the division had conveyed what aspects of the Agri Stats reports it argued were problematic, in spite of numerous requests by the company for them to do so, he said.
"To date, over the course of this nearly two year and almost $2 million monitorship, our monitors have billed for more time meeting and engaging with the division than they have for meeting and engaging with us. They refused to meet with our personnel who can explain the Agri Stats service to them and correct their misunderstandings. This is not how a monitorship is supposed to work," said Kilburn.
Wayne-Sanderson Farms is hopeful that in the coming weeks the division will meaningfully engage with the company to correct misunderstandings about the Agri Stats statistics subscription service, and put an end to the proceedings.
