Federal lawsuits have been filed against four leading potato producers, reported The Washington Post.
The four, Cavendish Farms, Lamb Weston, McCain Foods, and the J.R. Simplot Company, are the “leading producers and sellers in the United States of frozen potato products like French fries, hash browns and Tater Tots” and “conspired to artificially fix the prices of their spuds by sharing trade information and coordinating price raises beginning in 2021, according to the antitrust lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois within the past week,” wrote The Post.
The alleged coordination by the producers, which control over 95% of the market for frozen potato products, led prices for those products to increase by 47% between July 2022 and 2024.
“The four large potato processors had effectively formed a cartel, thereby breaking U.S. antitrust law, by having ‘the same access to each other’s data on pricing and other sensitive information, as well as with a direct line of communication to each other,’” The Hill reported.
McCain Foods denied that it had engaged in anticompetitive activity.
“McCain Foods strongly disputes any allegation that the company violated antitrust laws, or any other laws, with respect to the sale of frozen potato products,” Charlie Angelakos, McCain Foods vice president of global external affairs and sustainability, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Demand for potatoes, the country’s largest vegetable crop, has only grown in the past decade, according to the lawsuits. “The demand for them is inelastic; there are few substitutes for grocers and restaurants looking to sate the country’s appetite for fries and tots,” said The Post.
