Is the chicken industry rigged?

Many industries, such as health care and retail, make use of information-sharing services, but Agri Stats provides chicken producers with a rare level of detail, in uncommonly timely fashion. The company’s reports, portions of which Bloomberg Businessweek reviewed, contain exhaustive data about the internal operations of the nation’s biggest poultry corporations, including bird sizes, product mixes, and financial returns at participating plants. According to a 2011 presentation prepared by Agri Stats, the company gathers information from more than 95 percent of U.S. poultry processors.  Agri Stats has for years maintained that its reports don’t violate antitrust laws, in part because the information provided is historical. A typical report doesn’t say how much a company plans to charge for a cut of meat, only what it charged last month or last week. But historical data can be used to gauge future production levels, as Sanderson, who declined to comment for this story, demonstrated when he said he saw no evidence of a forthcoming ramp-up. He was referring to Agri Stats data showing the number of egg-laying hens, or pullets, that his competitors were placing on farms. This figure largely determines the number of eggs that will be laid and therefore how many chickens will be hatched and grown—a key marker of future production.