The Department of Justice proposed a settlement in May 2026 against Agri Stats, a data company accused of helping the biggest poultry producers coordinate prices and throttle meat supply — moves that squeezed working families at the grocery counter while fattening the boardroom.

The DOJ originally filed the antitrust case in 2023. Agri Stats, according to that filing, collected detailed production and pricing data from competing chicken companies and fed it back to them in ways that let rivals benchmark against each other — exactly the kind of coordination that kills real competition and keeps prices rigged upward.

When a handful of corporations control what ends up in your grocery cart and share enough data to move in lockstep, that's not a free market — that's a cartel with a spreadsheet. The settlement is a start. Working folks deserve to know whether it has any teeth.