Tyson Foods to pay $221.5M to settle price-fixing claims

— Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest meat supplier, said it will pay more than $200 million to settle a class-action suit that alleged price-fixing among chicken producers, saying the agreement is in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders. The Springdale, Arkansas-based company agreed to the $221.5 million deal after class-action claims accused the chicken industry of purposely inflating the price of chickens sold for meat for at least eight years, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Thursday. According to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 2016, the nation’s dominant chicken producers, including Tyson, cut supply to increase prices and conspired to manipulate prices on the now-defunct Georgia Dock chicken index. The U.S. Department of Justice last year opened a criminal investigation into the price-fixing claims and indicted 10 current and former food company executives and employees accused of fixing prices from at least 2012 to early 2019.