Fast-food chicken sandwich chain Chick-fil-A is suing more than a dozen suppliers claiming they conspired to inflate prices on more than $1 billion worth of chicken that it bought.
The company filed a lawsuit Friday in a Chicago federal court that claims 16 chicken producers colluded with one another to manipulate prices after the chain announced plans in 2014 to serve only meat from chickens raised without antibiotics within five years.
Chick-fil-A, based in Atlanta, says in the lawsuit that defendants including Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride and Sanderson Farms shared confidential bidding and pricing information with each other through phone calls and text messages.
These actions led to artificially inflated chicken prices and violated U.S. antitrust laws, which Chick-fil-A and others claim financially hurt them, the suit alleges.
The restaurant chain says the defendants had "significant market power in the market for broilers," and that "their conduct had actual anticompetitive effects with no or insufficient offsetting pro-competitive justifications."
Chick-fil-A, the self-proclaimed inventor of the chicken sandwich, is seeking unspecified damages, attorneys' fees and other costs that will be revealed at trial, court documents show.
The defendants, which also include Agri Stats, a subscription service that compiles farm production and sales data, are part of a class-action, price-fixing case that began in 2016. Since then, several buyers have filed their own similar complaints, most recently Target Corp., Bob Evans Restaurants and Chick-fil-A, which said they joined the class-action in their lawsuits.
The chicken suppliers have denied the allegations for years and continue to do so.
In an email, Tyson Foods spokesman Gary Mickelson said follow-on complaints like these are common and "do not change our position that these claims are unfounded."
"We will continue to vigorously defend our company," he said Monday.
The dispute over chicken prices heated up in June, when the Justice Department indicted two executives of Pilgrim's Pride. They have both entered innocent pleas.
Six more officials were indicted in October, including three with ties to companies based in Arkansas.
Later that month, Pilgrim's Pride agreed to pay $110.5 million after striking a plea deal with the Justice Department on price-fixing allegations.
Defendants Sanderson Farms and Pilgrim's Pride declined to comment on pending litigation or did not immediately respond.
Over the summer, Tyson Foods informed shareholders that it was cooperating with the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the broiler chicken industry after receiving a grand jury subpoena.
Chick-fil-A spokesman Chelsea Lee said she had "nothing additional to share at this time."
For the past 25 years, Chick-fil-A has featured cows in its advertisements and used the slogan "Eat Mor Chikin" to differentiate itself from other fast-food chains that serve hamburgers.