A Quebec consumer protection group intends to launch a class action lawsuit against four major beef processors in Canada and the U.S., alleging a “meat pricing conspiracy.”
“At a time of high inflation, it is unacceptable to make the price of beef even more expensive than it already is,” Sylvie De Bellefeuille, a lawyer for Option Consommateurs and the representative plantiff in the proposed suit, said in French in a release Tuesday.
The organization, a Quebec-based consumer protection group, said its lawyers filed an application last Thursday in the provincial Superior Court’s Montreal district for leave to bring a class action. At time of writing, the suit had not yet been authorized and its allegations have not been proven.
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Option Consommateurs alleges Cargill, JBS, Tyson Foods and National Beef Packing Co., which control the lion’s share of both the Canadian and U.S. beef markets, have “reportedly been plotting at least since 2015 to fix the price of beef.”
Anyone who has purchased beef in Quebec since Jan. 1, 2015 would form part of the class in this case, the group said.
The suit may be inspired by a similar case recently settled in the U.S., said Sylvain Charlebois, a food systems analyst with Dalhousie University.
JBS last month said it would pay US$52.5 million to settle litigation accusing meat-packing companies of conspiring to limit supply in the U.S. beef market in order to inflate prices.
Reuters quoted JBS at the time as saying the company did not admit liability but found settling that suit was in its best interest and would still defend against beef price-fixing claims by other plaintiffs.
The settlement came a month after U.S. President Joe Biden announced a plan to stop alleged “exploitation” in the meat sector.
In the U.S. suit, JBS, Cargill, National Beef and Tyson had been accused of conspiring since 2015 to create supply shortfalls.
“It’s a very bizarre lawsuit,” Charlebois said of the Quebec suit.
Grocers are excluded, he said, which implies only the packers were colluding with no other beneficiaries. However, transactions are mostly between grocery stores and consumers.
He doesn’t know how they’ll determine the specific prices grocers paid, Charlebois said.
However, he said, it’s not unwarranted for consumers to be wary of big food companies. “There is baggage created by the bread-price fixing scandal back in 2017.”
Loblaw and its parent company George Weston Ltd. that year admitted they’d been involved in a scheme to artificially raise bread prices between the early 2000s and 2015.
Class action suits are in progress in Ontario and Quebec against Loblaw and alleged co-conspirators, according to a Jan. 7 report from the Globe and Mail.
In 2017, Loblaw offered $25 gift cards as compensation to customers. However, the price of bread doubled during the period of alleged price fixing — outstripping food inflation significantly, Maclean’s writer Jason Markusoff and market analyst Kevin Grier wrote in 2018.
If a household was buying one loaf of bread a week, they wrote, the excessive price increase cost about an extra $370 between 2002 and 2015.
The beef lawsuit may spill into the rest of Canada, said Charlebois. It may also be the first of many lawsuits targeting other products. Food prices are high and people are skeptical, he said.
“If a consumer out there is skeptical, he or she has every right to be skeptical given what has happened in recent years,” Charlebois said.
— Geralyn Wichers is a reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator.
