US meat major Wayne-Sanderson Farms has robustly defended itself against Department of Justice (DoJ) claims that it is shirking obligations under a settlement resolving wage-suppression allegations.
The Anti-Trust Division of the DoJ has filed a motion in a Maryland federal court seeking to declare Wayne-Sanderson in violation of a Consent Decree linked to the settlement and to stop the company from using the industry benchmarking service Agri Stats.
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Oakwood, Georgia-based Wayne-Sanderson has now filed its own motion seeking clarity and relief from the court that its participation in the Agri Stats subscription service is lawful and permitted.
The DoJ is separately litigating against Agri Stats in a federal district court in Minnesota, seeking to permanently shut down the business.
On its website, Agri-Stats says it works with companies to “identify efficiency opportunities” and “increase competitiveness” but in previous wage-suppression lawsuits it has been accused of providing companies with compensation data from their peers which leads to wage-suppression in the meat industry. It has denied such claims.
The current legal battle is linked to a July 2022 class-action settlement when US poultry groups, including Sanderson Farms and Wayne Farms, as they were then prior to their imminent merger, agreed to pay out tens of millions of dollars in compensation to plant workers subjected to an alleged wage-fixing scheme.
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By GlobalDataWayne-Sanderson said its share of the payout was $69.8m.
The DoJ said at the time that the settlement ended a “long-running conspiracy to suppress worker pay at poultry processing plants and addresses deceptive abuses against poultry growers”.
It said the Consent Decree would stop the exchange of information on wages – a violation of the Sherman Act – and subject the poultry processors to a ten-year, anti-trust compliance monitoring process.
It is this ongoing monitoring service – and whether it is being complied with – that is at the heart of the current dispute.
It is conducted by private attorneys called monitors working at the direction of the DoJ, but at the cost of the company.
Commenting on the DoJ’s allegations of non-compliance, Jeremy Kilburn, Wayne-Sanderson’s chief legal and compliance officer, said: “The [DoJ] Division’s filing is premature and unwarranted and a result of a poorly modelled and broken monitorship.
“To date, over the course of this nearly two year and almost $2m 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.”
Wayne-Sanderson, behind poultry brands including Sanderson farms, Covington Farms and Platinum Harvest, claimed its own filing 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,” it said.
It added that it is hopeful that in the coming weeks the DoJ will “meaningfully engage with the company to correct its misunderstandings about the Agri Stats statistics subscription service and put an end to these wasteful proceedings”.
Just Food has asked the DoJ’s Anti-Trust Division for its response to Wayne-Sanderson’s claims, outside of US office hours.
It has also asked Agri Stats for its response to Wayne-Sanderson’s comments.
Wayne-Sanderson employs more than 26,000 people across 23 processing facilities.
