https://www.rawstory.com/people-need-to-go-to-jail-for-this-sh-t-video-shows-how-us-meat-industry-colludes-to-bo/ A former grocery executive told a progressive media outlet in a video released Tuesday that "people f------ 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 s---."
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."
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."
