3mo ago

McDonald's sues top meat packers for allegedly colluding to inflate the price of beef

apnews.com McDonald's sues top meat packers for allegedly colluding to inflate the price of beef

The fast food giant is suing Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef Packing Company and their subsidiaries.

McDonald’s has some beef with today’s largest meat packers.

The fast food giant is suing the U.S. meat industry’s “Big Four” — Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef Packing Company — and their subsidiaries, alleging a price fixing scheme for beef specifically. In a federal complaint, filed Friday in New York, McDonald’s accused the companies of anticompetitive measures such as collectively limiting supply to boost prices and charge “illegally inflated” amounts.

This collusion caused the beef market to become “a monopoly in which direct purchasers were forced to buy at prices dictated by (the meat packers),” McDonald’s suit reads — later noting that the injury it has sustained as one of those buyers is what “antitrust laws were designed to prevent.”

McDonald’s alleges that the meat packers’ conspiracy dates back nearly a decade, at least as early as January 2015, and continues today. Its suit argues these companies’ actions violate the Sherman Act, a federal antitrust law.

91 comments

- Exactly my thoughts
- Your greed is interfering with my greed, damn you!

McDonald’s has some beef with today’s largest meat packers.
I would have been disappointed if there wasn’t a line like this in the story somewhere. It practically writes itself.

We'll isn't that the pot calling the kettle black. The restaurant chain famous for jacking prices up while shrinking portion sizes and generally screwing their customers in every way they can doesn't like it when they are getting taken advantage of. Cry me a fucking river. Fuck you McDogsBreath!
- Don't forget about screwing their workers.
- I will be thoroughly stunned if the huge settlement they may get actually results in lower prices for customers.
- To be fair, the screwing flows downriver. If the sourcers start getting greedy, the business has to make up the difference by increasing prices.
- Yeah, I dunno how I missed this article. Makes me laugh that McD's is going to try something like this.
  https://www.newsweek.com/mcdonalds-inflation-economy-price-increase-joe-biden-1905209
  TheStreet reported that Medium French Fries went from $1.79 in 2019 to $4.19 in 2024, a 134.1 percent increase. A McChicken went from $1.29 to $3.89, a 201.6 percent hike.
  The price of the beloved Big Mac increased 87.7 percent, from $3.99 to $7.49. An order of 10 McNuggets rose by 68.8 percent, from $4.49 to $7.58. Of the five popular products examined, cheeseburgers saw the largest price increase—going from $1 to $3.15, a 215 percent spike.
  These increases exceed the general average for inflation calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that prices went up by about 21.5 percent between the end of 2019 and March 2024.
- Drag thinks that McDonald's price gouging its customers is good. It forces people to eat less meat. Drag's switch to veganism was probably helped by McDonald's having outrageous prices.
  
  Drag is forcing other people to block Drag. Bye Drag.

“Company sues for what company does to customers because those profits are theirs”
- "I was talking to my colluding friends and they said you were doing a collusion on us. What the hell? We're not the poors."
- The worst part is, the average citizen anywhere in the world can not afford to do this. Only some other evil megacorporations

Beef, the meat kept artificially cheap in the US by subsidies?
- Well it's a lot like all the ISPs taking fucktons of money over 25 years to "roll out fiber" and then just basically pocketing the money.
  Corporations are the real welfare queens.
  
  Corporations are the real welfare queens.
  not sure I'd say queens, perhaps parasites would best fit that sentence
  
  Don't forget they did that several times!
- At great expense to the health of the people and the climate
- Beef, the meat kept artificially cheap ~~in the US~~ by subsidies?
  FTFY, you are not alone in this stupidity. "Dutch Trump" Wilders got his votes because the government said that maybe the whole country should not be one big cattle farm.

Capitalist system
Big four fixing prices
ShockedPikachu.png
The system is working exactly as it's designed to. I've said it before and I will say it again: captialism only encourages monopolies/cartels - that's the whole point.

If it’s beef, they why have their chicken nuggets also doubled in price in the last couple of years? Oh, this goes back almost a decade you say? So why did you double or triple prices post pandemic?
- Dude it's literally right there at the beginning of the post
  The fast food giant is suing the U.S. meat industry’s “Big Four” — Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef Packing Company
  
  You can't honestly think McDonald's trying to blame their massive price increases solely on their meat providers is valid.
- Yeah chicken prices are absolutely insane.

"This is an absurd accusation. We make money by employing children and undocumented immigrants and violating safety standards, not by colluding on prices." -US meat industry
- not sure why, but i read this in J K Simmons' voice.

Can we sue McDonald for all that they did to artificially decrease the cost of beef, and the immense harm that was done to the climate as a result?
- And the poor animals. Cows are friends not food
  
  They can be both.

Thank god we have Good guy McDonald’s going after the evil natural beef guys….wait
- And they'll certainly reduce their prices once they get their supply chain work down right? ... Right?
- Drag thinks McDonald's is evil and so is Big Beef. Natural beef is bad. Lab beef and imitation beef are ethical.

Said one quasi monopolist to the other...
- What? How on earth is mcdonalds a monopoly in any way?
  
  Maybe not a real monopoly, but a sufficiently big player that usually has no problems of using their buying power to squeeze the blood out of their suppliers.
- I'd be OK with giant corporations as if they were actually competing with each other for consumers and labor, paying their fair share of taxes, and weren't allowed to use their revenue to subvert the will of the people by buying politicians.
  The problem is that it takes a strong FTC, IRS, NLRB, FEC to ensure the above things, and we know how Republicans and billionaires feel about that.

They fucked with McDonalds. Big mistake.
- Big Mcsteak.
  
  Only available for a Limited Time!
  
  Sounds like something I’d buy
  
  McGenius

Hey now, we should salute McDonalds for keeping Big Beef in check. Those prices trickle down to us! /s

I trust what McDonald's is saying in this case. If anyone knows what collusion to inflate prices and fuck over clients looks like, it's the place with the broken soft serve machines.

Wait, McDonald’s uses real beef?
- They use the trade marked "Real Beef".
  
  Real Beef™
  (May contain raccoon and/or armadillo harvested from American highways.)

No one but Ron can gouge on the meat. holding comically large baseball bat

Good. The beef packers already got slapped with a FTC suit for price fixing.

Someone should sue McDonald's for the same thing. All of their prices (not just for beef) have been massively inflated for their profit. A meal there shouldn't cost $12+ (I've seen as much as $15), it's trash food. I haven't been back in a long time.

McDonald's should become their own meat packer and interface with the farmers direct. Everyone gets the best deal that way and cut out the asshole middleman driving everything through the roof.
- They've tried. Wendy's QSCC has tried. Walmart is trying. It's hard to be a beef packer. You have to sell the rest of the animal too, and now you're just a filthy beef packer yourself. Also sadly impossible to interface with ranchers direct, still must be fed out at a feed yard.
  
  Ahh yeah, good point. I didn't think about the feed lot portion.

Oh the ironing

Any bets on how long it will take Fucker Carlson to start deriding McDonalds?

Tell your boyfriend, if he says he's got beef, that I'm a vegetarian and I ain't fucking scared of him.

I don't know anything about the specifics here, but here's a 5 year graph of futures for live cattle versus beef:
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/live-cattle

If there's collusion to engage in price-fixing by meat packers, I'd expect to see beef prices rising without a corresponding increase in cattle prices.
Beef prices did indeed recently start rising rapidly without a corresponding increase in live cattle prices.
But on the other hand, beef prices are also a lot lower relative to live cattle prices than they were during roughly COVID-19.
- TBF things look pretty different if you go back to 2015 like McDonald's is alleging.
  
  EDIT: To me, it really looks like COVID was the big factor impacting price though.
  
  Oh, that's a good point -- missed that in the article. They did say that it started in 2015.
  
  COVID wasn't the only factor. What people don't remember because of all the other crazy shit that happened was that we had a 3 year drought.
  Prices still haven't stabilized because it's expensive to buy cattle right now. Prices will likely be in the shitter for another 1.5-2 years, and I'm not sure they'll ever really come down in a way people notice.

Now that I'm vegan these articles are so bizarre to me. Oh the price of corpse has gone up? And the industry that produces said corpse is price gouging? That's nice I'll have these lovely inexpensive chick peas for dinner and not participate in death and abuse and rape, and my health will be better for it. It's pretty easy to do.

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