On October 10, 2025, a settlement was filed in an information sharing case that highlights the antitrust risks of exchanging information with competitors and sheds light on the relatively aggressive view of such risks by the current U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division. The following examines the risks of information pools in the context of that case as well as a parallel DOJ case concerning the same players. We also identify guideposts for identifying and mitigating antitrust risks when sharing information with competitors both directly and through third-party exchanges.
Agri Stats Case and Settlement
In Jien v. Perdue, filed in 2019, a class of poultry plant workers alleged that more than a dozen poultry processors, together with two consultant firms (Agri Stats and Webber, Meng, Sahl & Co. or WMS), conspired to suppress wages in part through creating detailed, regular exchanges of nonpublic compensation information. Agri Stats is alleged to have compiled and distributed monthly reports containing plant-level information on wages for certain categories of plant workers. While this data was anonymized, the plaintiffs allege that it was sufficiently granular and disaggregated that defendant processors could—and did—match data to known competitor facilities. The defendant processors allegedly used this information to coordinate through meetings among executives and plant-to-plant information exchanges.
The plaintiffs received final approval in June 2025 for settlements with all defendant poultry processors creating a fund totaling approximately $400 million dollars and with consultant WMS for cooperation. On October 10, the plaintiffs reached a settlement agreement with Agri Stats—the last remaining defendant—and filed for approval from the court. The class plaintiffs’ settlement with Agri Stats includes no monetary payment but requires Agri Stats to change its reporting practices by redacting certain fields of plant-level data in its broiler chicken and turkey reports.
DOJ’s Parallel Meat Processing Industry Information Exchange Cases
In July 2022, the DOJ’s Antitrust Division filed suit against WMS and a subset of poultry processor co-conspirators alleged to employ more than 90 percent of poultry processing plant workers in U.S. v. Cargill. The DOJ alleged that the defendants unlawfully suppressed wages through information exchanges via WMS as well as through meetings and other direct communications. At the same time, the DOJ filed for approval of consent decrees providing for approximately $85 million in restitution, prohibiting WMS from taking surveys that would facilitate sharing of competitively sensitive information, and appoint a monitor to ensure compliance.
In January 2025, the DOJ filed with the court to enforce the judgment. The DOJ alleged that defendant Wayne Sanderson had, in violation of the judgment, continued to send information about “payroll, general ledger, and other data about wages and other payment for work” to Agri Stats and continued to receive Agri Stats reports containing competitively sensitive information. The DOJ stated that Wayne Sanderson had asserted that the information it provided did not comprise “compensation” information and that it had asked Agri Stats to excise certain labor-related fields in the reports it provided. The DOJ countered that Wayne Sanderson could readily reconstruct the excised fields with other information in the reports.
Separately, the DOJ filed suit against Agri Stats alone, with no poultry processor codefendants, in September 2023. The complaint in U.S. v. Agri Stats alleges that the reports compiled by Agri Stats have enabled “all major U.S. chicken, pork, and turkey processors” to raise prices and suppress output in their respective markets. The DOJ alleges that Agri Stats produces numerous granular current reports of competitively sensitive information including pricing, operating cost information such as wages and farmer or grower pay, and profit margins. Agri Stats allegedly refused to make these reports available to parties not contributing data to the report and encouraged recipients to make use of the reports to increase overall industry profitability. The case is currently stayed due to the government shutdown, with the DOJ’s reply to Agri Stats’s motion for summary judgment still pending.
DOJ’s Involvement in the Private Agri Stats Settlement
In September 2025, the court in Jien v. Perdue wrote to the DOJ for comments on the proposed settlement with Agri Stats in light of the settlements in Cargill. In its letter, the DOJ raises two objections to the proposed settlement. First, it would not prevent Agri Stats from publishing data aggregated at a different level than the facility-level. Second, it applies to specific fields in specific reports, potentially allowing publication of the problematic data in other reports or allowing publication of other data from which the problematic data could be reconstructed.
The DOJ letter states that the settlements in the U.S. v. Cargill case fully resolve these concerns by focusing on prohibiting consultants, such as Agri Stats, from receiving competitively sensitive data, which is defined very broadly as “non-public information that is relevant to, or likely to have an impact on, at least one dimension of competition”—rather than merely prohibiting consultants from publishing it. The class plaintiffs counter in their brief supporting the settlement that their economic experts have concluded that, without the plant-level fields to be removed from Agri Stats reports, competitors will be unable to reconstruct the labor-related data that subscribers had previously used to suppress wages. The plaintiffs acknowledge, however, that “while not completely eliminating the threat of the Agri Stats reports, [the settlement is] certainly is a step towards neutralizing their impact.”
Guideposts for Mitigating the Risks of Information Sharing
These cases, and the DOJ’s interaction with the private class action, provide an important touchpoint for evaluating when aggregation and reporting of competitively sensitive information may raise antitrust concerns and litigation risk.
- Agencies and private plaintiffs are closely scrutinizing exchanges occurring through third-party brokers. The use of third-party data consultants featured heavily in both agency and private suits concerning meat processing industry coordination. Although these cases also involved direct meetings among competitors, the alleged conspiracies depended heavily on shared information exchange data. Firms should closely evaluate any information shared with organizations that may also obtain information from competitors—including industry consultants and data analysis tool providers—in line with these guidelines and applicable agency guidance.
- “Competitively sensitive information” may be construed broadly. Challenges to information sharing exchanges include arrangements that reduce competition for wages as well as those that impact price or output. Unlawful exchanges need not directly involve wage, price, or output data; the DOJ’s settlement in Cargill shows that it is enough to share data that is merely likely to have an impact on one or more of those dimensions of competition.
- Agencies are sensitive to the ability of firms to reverse engineer competitively sensitive information. In both the Wayne Sanderson enforcement action and the letter concerning the Jien settlement, the DOJ pointedly noted the possibility that industry participants could use their knowledge of the industry to deanonymize data and reverse engineer competitively sensitive fields from other data fields and other reports. Firms evaluating information exchanges need to look beyond the facial exchange and consider closely what can be done in the data in the real world.
- An antitrust violation can be based on the net effect of an information exchange—it is not necessary that participants expressly intend to fix prices or wages. The agencies’ jointly issued January 2025 Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers make clear that information sharing can violate the antitrust laws when facilitating an agreement among competitors and when the net effect is to lessen competition, even without a competitor agreement. The DOJ’s Agri Stats suit, challenging the lawfulness of the company’s reports and its positioning of those reports as a tool to maximize industry profit, is a clear example of the latter.
- Firms should not assume that the agencies will accept private settlements. Although the plaintiffs in Jien may have found limitations on Agri Stats reporting adequate, the DOJ suggested that stronger relief was necessary. In particular, the DOJ focused on prohibiting the exchange of broadly defined, competitively sensitive information itself rather than trying to more narrowly excise problematic data from reporting. This is consistent with the DOJ’s apparent concern that information exchanges, both through consultants or mediated through algorithms, could have the effect of lessening competition even without a conscious object to do so.
Firms sharing information with third parties that may also collect similar information from competitors should take care to establish and document the procompetitive rationales for the exchange. Firms should further ensure that information is aggregated and anonymized in a way that truly prevents reverse engineering competitively sensitive engineering.
