Senior leadership at several poultry wholesale companies face criminal charges connected with alleged market manipulation of chicken prices, said Bloomberg.

The executives include Pilgrim's Pride Corp. CEO Jayson Penn; Roger Austin, a former Pilgrim vice president; Claxton Poultry president Mikell Fries and Claxton vice president Scott Brady. They are accused of colluding with each other to fix chicken prices between 2012 and 2017, subverting the typical bidding process through which grocery stores and restaurants typically buy their meat.

The accusations are backed with a large number of text messages between the executives, showing them agreeing to collaborate on prices as a way to increase profits within the industry as a whole, as well as to punish people they don't like (Penn referred to what he called an 'A-Hole premium' with some customers). For instance, Bloomberg cited one instance when Pilgrim called Claxton after both had submitted a bid for dark meat; someone from Pilgrim told someone at Claxton that Pilgrim was selling its meat for 3 cents more, which then prompted Claxton to raise its prices too. While the specific amounts are small, Bloomberg noted that, at the scale these companies operate at, even a few cents' difference can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Bloomberg noted that around the time the collusion began, the price of chicken began slowly rising, which the government said was due to market manipulation.

The accused executives face prison terms of up to 10 years. More charges will likely be filed against other individuals in the future, with Bloomberg noting that there are seven suppliers named in the indictment but only Claxton and Pilgrim's have so far been named. It added that the federal government is in the middle of a similar price-fixing probe among beef processors.

The incident calls to mind a 2018 case where major tuna fish suppliers were found to have been colluding to keep the price of canned fish artificially high. Starkist ultimately pleaded guilty for its role in the scheme and was fined $100 million; executives from Bumblebee Tuna pleaded guilty to charges the previous year. The third and final major tuna producer, Chicken of the Sea, was spared because the company informed authorities of the scheme and cooperated with the investigation.