Cattle Cartel Trucking Lawsuit, The “Big Four” Cattle Conspiracy, How Ranchers Exposed a $83.5 Million Price-Fixing Scheme
Cattle ranchers and the National Farmers Union filed a massive antitrust class action lawsuit in April 2019 against the “Big Four” meatpackers—JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and National Beef—alleging they conspired together since 2015 to suppress the prices paid to ranchers for fed cattle while selling beef at inflated prices. The lawsuit claims these companies, which control roughly 85% of U.S. beef processing, manipulated cattle supply by limiting purchases, shutting down processing capacity, and coordinating pricing strategies to artificially depress what ranchers received.
In February 2025, JBS agreed to an $83.5 million settlement without admitting wrongdoing, with a claim deadline of September 15, 2025 for eligible ranchers. The case against Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef continues in Minnesota federal court, with a class certification hearing held in November 2025.
Something didn’t add up, and ranchers knew it.
In 2015, cattle prices started dropping. Not gradually—sharply. Meanwhile, beef prices at the grocery store? They kept climbing. The gap between what ranchers got paid for their livestock and what consumers paid for ribeyes widened into a canyon that seemed to have no explanation except one: somebody was rigging the game.
By 2019, ranchers had had enough. They filed a lawsuit that would expose what they called “cartel behavior” at the highest levels of America’s beef industry.
When The Numbers Stop Making Sense
Every rancher knows the agricultural story by heart: Supply and demand. Weather. Global pressures. Drought. Feed costs. Fuel prices. These factors explain market fluctuations in cattle prices—or they’re supposed to.
But starting in 2015, those explanations started sounding like rehearsed scripts. The slope had shifted. Feed costs stayed roughly the same. Freight costs were stable. Yet the checks ranchers received at the sale barn felt lighter every time.
According to the lawsuit filed in Minnesota federal court, cattle prices dropped significantly during what would become the “class period” running from June 1, 2015 to February 29, 2020. At the same time, boxed beef prices—what meatpackers charged to sell processed beef—stayed high or even increased.
The difference between buying cattle cheap and selling beef expensive is called the “meat margin.” And according to ranchers’ allegations, the Big Four meatpackers conspired to artificially widen that margin by billions of dollars.
Meet The “Big Four” Controlling 85% of America’s Beef
Four corporations dominate the U.S. beef processing market with an iron grip:
JBS – A Brazilian-owned company, the world’s largest meat processor
Tyson Foods – American multinational, one of the largest food companies
Cargill – Private American corporation, massive agricultural conglomerate
National Beef – Fourth-largest beef packer in the U.S.
Together, these four companies control approximately 85% of fed cattle slaughter in America. That kind of market concentration means they essentially dictate terms from the ranch all the way to the grocery shelf.
With that power, ranchers allege, came collusion.
How The Alleged Price-Fixing Scheme Actually Worked
The lawsuit alleges a simple but devastatingly effective conspiracy: The Big Four agreed to limit how many cattle they would buy and slaughter, creating artificial scarcity that drove down prices ranchers could demand.
Here’s how it allegedly worked:
Step 1: Coordinate Cattle Purchases
The meatpackers allegedly agreed to reduce the number of U.S. cattle they purchased from ranchers, limiting demand and forcing ranchers to compete against each other by accepting lower and lower prices.
Step 2: Operate Below Capacity
Rather than running their processing plants at full capacity, the companies allegedly deliberately slowed down slaughter operations—killing fewer cattle than their facilities could handle. Some plants were shut down entirely during this period.
Step 3: Enforce a “Queuing Convention”
This is where it gets particularly brutal. Cattle are highly perishable—you can’t just hold onto them indefinitely. Ranchers have a narrow window to sell before their cattle become too heavy or too old, losing value rapidly.
The meatpackers allegedly exploited this by creating artificial delays and backlogs. Ranchers couldn’t negotiate because they literally couldn’t afford to wait. They had to accept the first bid offered, no matter how low, or watch their cattle lose value by the day.
Step 4: Share Confidential Market Information
According to allegations, the Big Four coordinated by sharing information about pricing intentions, slaughter schedules, procurement volumes, and future supply plans—the exact kind of “informal coordination” that functions like a cartel in a concentrated industry.
Step 5: Sell Beef at Inflated Prices
While ranchers got squeezed on one end, the meatpackers were allegedly selling less processed beef at higher prices to grocery stores and distributors. Classic supply manipulation: reduce supply, increase price.
The result? Record profits for meatpackers. Financial devastation for family ranching operations.
The Evidence That Wouldn’t Go Away
This wasn’t just angry ranchers complaining about bad markets. The lawsuit was built on hard data.
Statistical analysis showed coordinated price movements that couldn’t be explained by normal market forces. Expert economists testified that the patterns indicated collusion, not competition.
Internal company communications—the kind prosecutors dream about—allegedly revealed coordination among the defendants. While we haven’t seen smoking-gun emails saying “let’s fix prices,” the patterns of behavior told a damning story.
Industry insiders provided testimony. Economic models demonstrated artificially suppressed prices. And the sheer concentration of market power—four companies controlling 85%—made the conspiracy not just possible but almost inevitable.
As R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust in June 2025, ranchers have warned about this for years. Now the evidence was finally making its way into federal court.
The $83.5 Million JBS Settlement Nobody Expected
On February 4, 2025, news broke that JBS—one of the world’s biggest meat producers—had reached an $83.5 million settlement deal to end claims it conspired to suppress fed cattle prices.
Let’s be clear: JBS did not admit wrongdoing. The settlement agreement specifically states that. This is standard legal language—companies settle because it’s cheaper and cleaner than fighting, not because they’re confessing to anything.
But $83.5 million is not pocket change. Even for a company as massive as JBS, that’s real money.
Who Gets Money From The JBS Settlement?
The settlement covers two groups of claimants:
The Producer Class: Anyone who directly sold fed cattle for slaughter to JBS, Tyson, Cargill, or National Beef between June 1, 2015 and February 29, 2020 (excluding certain contract types like cost-plus or profit-sharing agreements).
The Exchange Class: Anyone who held a long position in Live Cattle Futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before June 1, 2015, and liquidated that position through an offsetting market transaction before November 1, 2016.
Translation: If you sold cattle directly to these companies during the class period, or if you traded cattle futures and got burned when prices dropped, you might qualify for a payment.
The claim deadline is September 15, 2025. After that, you’re out of luck.
How Much Will Individual Ranchers Get?
That’s the million-dollar question—or in this case, the $83.5 million question.
The settlement website doesn’t specify exact payment amounts per claimant. It depends on how many eligible claims are filed, what the settlement administrator calculates, and what the court approves.
Some ranchers might get a few thousand dollars. Others, depending on how much cattle they sold during the class period, could receive significantly more. The distribution formula typically considers the volume of cattle sold and the alleged harm suffered.
One thing’s certain: Whatever individual ranchers receive won’t make up for five years of suppressed prices. But it’s something—and more importantly, it’s accountability.
The DOJ Investigation That Changed Everything
In May 2020, during Trump’s first term, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division launched an investigation into the same four companies after cattle prices collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic while beef prices soared to record highs.
That investigation produced no major enforcement actions or reforms publicly. Five years later, the same corporations still dominate the market with the same concentration of power.
But on November 7, 2024, President Trump announced he had directed the DOJ to investigate possible price manipulation and unfair practices in the beef industry again. This time, advocacy groups like Farm Action are demanding that the investigation go deeper.
Eleven state attorneys general sent a letter to the DOJ asking for an investigation into suspected price fixing. The work of the ranchers’ legal team at Robins Kaplan and their co-counsel spurred these follow-on investigations.
Farm Action laid out exactly what DOJ investigators should look for:
- Contract Control: Alternative Marketing Agreements (AMAs) that function as exclusive deals, locking ranchers into one buyer
- Information Sharing: Exchanges about slaughter schedules, procurement volumes, or pricing intentions
- Abuse and Exclusion: Retaliation against producers who resist packer demands through delayed pickups or refusals to buy
- Blocking Smaller Processors: Using contracts and logistics control to prevent smaller, independent processors from competing
If they find anticompetitive behavior, the DOJ has powerful tools under the Sherman Antitrust Act, including criminal prosecution and the ability to break up monopolies.
What’s Happening With The Remaining Defendants
JBS settled. But Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef are still fighting.
In November 2025, R-CALF USA—one of the lead plaintiffs—traveled to Minneapolis for a class certification hearing. This is a critical procedural step. If the court certifies the class, the lawsuit becomes a full-blown class action representing potentially thousands of ranchers. If certification is denied, individual ranchers would have to sue separately—a practical impossibility given the costs.
The case remains in Minnesota federal court, where discovery continues and both sides prepare for what could eventually be a trial. Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef have argued that ranchers are too late with their claims and that the lawsuit should be dismissed.
But judges keep letting the case proceed. In July 2024, beef producers defending against the claims told the court that ranchers were too late after two failed complaint attempts. The judge wasn’t buying it.
The Feeder Cattle Ranchers Fighting Their Own Battle
There’s actually a second major lawsuit running parallel to the fed cattle case.
Feeder cattle ranchers—those who raise steers and heifers before they’re placed in feedlots to be fattened for slaughter—filed their own class action alleging the Big Four indirectly suppressed feeder cattle prices by fixing fed cattle prices.
Think of it like a domino effect. If meatpackers suppress the price of fed cattle (the cattle ready for slaughter), feedlot operators have less money to pay for feeder cattle. The suppression cascades backward through the entire supply chain.
Paul LLP Trial Attorneys represents this feeder cattle class. They allege violations of both the Sherman Act and the Packers and Stockyards Act—a Depression-era law designed specifically to prevent meatpacker monopolies from exploiting farmers and ranchers.
Feeder cattle operations are the crucial first step in the beef supply chain, maintaining a steady supply of quality cattle year-over-year. When their prices get suppressed, it threatens the entire foundation of American beef production.
What “Cartel Behavior” Actually Means Legally
Let’s break down the legal terminology without the jargon.
Antitrust Law: Federal laws (primarily the Sherman Act of 1890) that prohibit agreements among competitors that restrain trade or create monopolies. The goal is to keep markets competitive and fair.
Price-Fixing: When competitors agree to set prices at a certain level rather than letting the market determine prices through genuine competition. This is illegal per se—meaning it’s automatically illegal, no exceptions.
Market Manipulation: Artificially controlling supply or demand to move prices in a direction that benefits you at the expense of others.
Conspiracy: A legal agreement—doesn’t have to be in writing or even spoken—where two or more parties coordinate to break the law. Courts can infer conspiracy from patterns of behavior.
Class Action: A lawsuit where one or more plaintiffs represent a larger group (the “class”) of people harmed in the same way. It’s efficient—thousands of ranchers with similar claims don’t each have to file separate lawsuits.
Treble Damages: Under federal antitrust law, if you prove price-fixing, you can recover three times your actual damages. This is designed to punish violators and deter future misconduct.
Why This Case Matters Beyond Beef
The cattle cartel lawsuit isn’t just about one industry. It’s a test case for whether antitrust enforcement can still protect American producers from corporate monopolies.
Just four corporations control 85% of beef processing. That same concentration exists in pork (66% controlled by four companies) and poultry (51% controlled by four companies). The same companies often dominate multiple sectors.
When that much power concentrates in so few hands, the temptation to coordinate instead of compete becomes overwhelming. And when coordination happens, family farms and independent ranchers get crushed.
Farm Action put it bluntly: “This time, the DOJ must dig deeper into the collusion and political influence that define this industry.”
What Happens Next For Ranchers
If you sold fed cattle to any of the Big Four between June 2015 and February 2020, here’s what you need to know:
File Your JBS Settlement Claim By September 15, 2025
Visit cattleantitrustsettlement.com for detailed instructions. You’ll need documentation showing cattle sales during the class period.
Watch For Additional Settlements
Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef could settle too. If they do, separate claim processes will open up with new deadlines.
The Case Against Non-Settling Defendants Continues
Even if you don’t qualify for the JBS settlement, the litigation against the other three could eventually result in a verdict or additional settlements.
Class Certification Decision Coming
If the court certifies the class, every eligible rancher becomes part of the lawsuit automatically—though you can opt out if you want to sue independently.
Monitor DOJ Investigation
Federal criminal antitrust enforcement could produce additional penalties, fines, and even criminal charges if the DOJ finds sufficient evidence of coordination.
The Trust That’s Harder to Rebuild
Here’s what no settlement can fix: the erosion of trust in the market itself.
For generations, ranchers believed that if you raised quality cattle and brought them to market at the right time, you’d get a fair price. Not a guaranteed profit—agriculture is too risky for that—but a price determined by genuine competition, not boardroom coordination.
That faith is shattered. Even if every defendant settles and every eligible rancher gets a check, the question remains: Is the price I’m getting today actually fair? Or am I still getting screwed, just more carefully?
As one legal analysis put it: “Settlements will probably keep coming in phases, with declarations emphasizing that no misconduct is acknowledged. We’ll cut checks. We’ll mail out notices. The system will absorb the impact in its own way.”
But absorbing an $83.5 million settlement is one thing. Rebuilding trust that the beef market operates fairly? That’s a different challenge entirely.
The Bottom Line
The cattle cartel lawsuit exposed what ranchers have suspected for years: When four companies control 85% of an industry, the line between legal parallel behavior and illegal conspiracy gets dangerously thin.
JBS settled for $83.5 million without admitting wrongdoing. Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef continue to fight. The DOJ is investigating again. And ranchers are left wondering if anything will actually change.
One thing’s certain: The cattle industry will never look quite the same. Whether that’s because of legal accountability, regulatory reform, or just the harsh spotlight of public attention remains to be seen.
For now, affected ranchers have until September 15, 2025 to file claims in the JBS settlement. After that, it’s wait and see what happens with the rest.
And hope that next time they bring cattle to market, the price they get is determined by competition, not conspiracy.
Key Takeaways:
- Cattle ranchers sued the “Big Four” meatpackers (JBS, Tyson, Cargill, National Beef) in 2019 for allegedly conspiring to suppress cattle prices since 2015
- The lawsuit claims the companies coordinated to limit cattle purchases, operate below capacity, and manipulate supply to depress prices while selling beef at inflated rates
- JBS settled for $83.5 million in February 2025 without admitting wrongdoing; claim deadline is September 15, 2025
- Litigation continues against Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef in Minnesota federal court
- The DOJ announced a new investigation into possible price manipulation in the beef industry in November 2024
Resources:
- Official Settlement Website: https://www.cattleantitrustsettlement.com/
- R-CALF USA Antitrust Information: https://www.r-calfusa.com/
- Farm Action Beef Industry Analysis: https://farmaction.us/
- Sherman Antitrust Act: 15 U.S.C. §§ 1-7
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult with qualified legal professionals regarding your specific situation.
About the Author
Sarah Klein, JD, is a licensed attorney and legal content strategist with over 12 years of experience across civil, criminal, family, and regulatory law. At All About Lawyer, she covers a wide range of legal topics — from high-profile lawsuits and courtroom stories to state traffic laws and everyday legal questions — all with a focus on accuracy, clarity, and public understanding.
Her writing blends real legal insight with plain-English explanations, helping readers stay informed and legally aware.
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