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.
A few years ago, I was hit hard with some food poisoning that had me in the hospital. I don’t remember what it was, but it made me tune into food recall reports.
And those recall reports are FREQUENT, and they’re mostly meat.
I’m not a vegetarian, but I cut beef out of my diet last year. Pork is my next one. Chicken is going to be really hard though.
For years I never thought I could do vegetarian because I would miss bacon and chicken. Over a decade later and both of those things are so far down in my list of things I miss.