Court Consolidates 27 Pork Price-Fixing Lawsuits Against Big Meat Packers

Jan 09, 2023

Consolidating 27 cases involving 146 parties, Minnesota’s District Court Judge John Tunheim wrote the order and opinion to merge all related pork antitrust cases pending in the District of Minnesota into In re Pork Antitrust Litigation, following the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) issued conditional transfer order.

“The Court will consolidate the cases for all future pretrial proceedings into a single multidistrict litigation (MDL) because the Court concludes that consolidation will best promote efficiency, prevent confusion and unnecessary complication, and prevent duplicative or conflicting decisions,” Tunheim’s order explains.

Consolidation will also allow the parties and the Court to generally file updates and changes in a centralized location, without the need to make minor changes to satisfy different case numbers, as well as improve the following of developments using one unified docket, the order adds.

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Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment