The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) plans to take its case where poultry industry executives were accused of conspiring to rig bids and drive up the price of chicken to a third trial, but only intends to take half of the defendants to court.
Two trials related to the case have now ended in mistrials because jurors were unable to reach verdicts. The first mistrial was declared on December 16, 2021, while the second mistrial occurred on March 29.
However, according to a Bloomberg report, charges will be dropped against half of the defendants so the prosecutors can “streamline the case and conserve the resources of the court, the parties, and the public.”
The DOJ first indicted four individuals on the federal charges in June 2020. Those suspects were Mikell Fries, president of Claxton Poultry; Jason Penn, then-CEO of Pilgrim’s Pride; Scott Brady, vice president of Claxton Poultry; and Roger Austin, a former Pilgrim’s vice president. Charges against those four remain, as well as those against Bill Lovette, another former CEO of Pilgrim’s Pride, who was one of six men indicted in October 2020.
Indicted at the same time as Lovette were Timothy Mulrenin, an executive with Perdue Farms who formerly worked for Tyson Foods; William Kantola, an executive with Koch Foods; Jimmie Little, a former Pilgrim’s Pride sales director; Rickie Blake, a former director and manager at George’s; and Gary Roberts, a Case Farms employee and former Tyson Foods employee. However, charges against those five people have been dropped.
The indictments that led up to the two trials, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), is the result of an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price fixing, bid rigging and other anticompetitive conduct in the broiler chicken industry, which is being conducted by the Antitrust Division with the assistance of the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General, Federal Bureau of Investigation Washington Field Office and U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General.
