Farmers who raised chickens for Tyson Foods have filed a class action lawsuit against the meat company, alleging that the company broke its promise not to engage in antitrust behavior.

The complaint filed in the Circuit Court of Stoddard County, Missouri, on June 6 alleges that Tyson Foods promised local and state officials that it would sell its Dexter, Missouri, meatpacking complex to a competitor after the company closed two plants in the state in 2023. 

There are 45 different former Tyson contract growers suing Tyson Foods, which made nearly $53 billion in sales in 2023 and operates 183 chicken facilities across the country. 

Tyson Foods sold the Dexter property in March to Cal-Maine Foods, the nation’s largest egg production company.

“Our lawsuit alleges that due to the anti-competitive behavior of the defendants, those families will never again be able to perform the one job they spent millions of dollars to do,” said Rusell Oliver, the Missouri attorney representing the poultry growers. “This fact renders the value of those farms (that were once worth millions) to nearly nothing.”

The lawsuit alleges that when it came time to sell the Missouri facilities, Tyson went back on its promise by not selling to a competing meatpacking company.

The lawsuit alleges that both Tyson and Cal-Maine, which are named as defendants in the suit, conspired to keep a different meatpacking company from purchasing the Dexter facility, which would be in violation of Missouri’s antitrust laws.

Tyson and Cal-Maine did not respond to requests for comment. 

Following the closures, Republican Missouri Congressman Josh Hawley and the state’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey urged Tyson CEO Donnie King to sell the shuttered Missouri facilities to another poultry processor in order to abide by state and federal antitrust laws.

Both Hawley and Bailey did not respond to requests for comment. 

Chicken processing and egg production may not seem entirely unrelated, but the differences in production could cost farmers millions of dollars, adding to already heavy debt loads they carry.

In May, Investigate Midwest reported that farmers who raise chickens for Tyson Foods had been left millions of dollars in debt after the company shuttered six chicken processing plants across the country in 2023. 

Farmers who spoke to Investigate Midwest said they were facing bankruptcy, selling off land or taking on more debt to become egg producers for Cal-Maine Foods, after the Dexter complex was sold to the egg company.

Two former contract growers who raised chickens for that meatpacking plant told Investigate Midwest earlier this year that it would cost them upwards of $2 million to convert their barns into egg-producing operations.

This is a common experience across the poultry industry and forms the basis for the recently-filed lawsuit. Contract growers will build or purchase barns to meet company-specific parameters.

If a contract is cut short due to a plant closure or a grower wanting to try to go to a different poultry company, they are often unable to reuse the barns and operations they already have.

The pending litigation would not be the first time that Tyson Foods or other major poultry companies have faced class action lawsuits from contract growers for antitrust behaviors.

In 2021, producers in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Texas filed a lawsuit that alleged major companies Tyson and Perdue Foods shared  grower pay data in order to suppress wages across the sector. Both companies settled for $35.8 million later that year. 

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