The United States District Court for the District of Oregon recently denied a marijuana grower’s motion to dismiss a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) lawsuit in Momtazi Family, LLC v. Wagner et al., No. 3:19-cv-00476-ER (D. Or. Aug. 27, 2019) [Doc. No. 26] (“Order”). The plaintiff in the case is the former operator and current lessor of a biodynamic vineyard in Oregon, whose property abuts the defendant’s marijuana farm. The crux of the…

Chief Judge Tunheim recently dismissed, with leave to amend, the class complaints in In Re Pork Antitrust Litigation.  The Pork case— filed in the District of Minnesota against Tyson, Hormel, JBS and other major pork producers—alleged a conspiracy beginning in 2009 to inflate artificially the price of pork sold in the United States.  While the court was “unwilling to force Defendants into significant and costly discovery without plausible allegations that they engaged in the…

Eager to curb foodborne-illness outbreaks, retail giants like Walmart and Albertsons are turning to blockchain technology [1] to track exactly where their foods are coming from. Blockchain, as compared to the eye-straining, paper-heavy tracking systems before it, allows retailers to trace the supply-chain history for a single food item within seconds. For example, in a test case using IBM’s blockchain technology, Walmart traced the supply chain for two off-the-shelf mangoes randomly taken from one of…

The active ingredient in popular weed killers, glyphosate, has gotten bad press lately.  Thousands of plaintiffs have alleged that exposure to it caused their cancers.  Jurors have responded by invoking punitive damages and awarding billion dollar verdicts.  These headline-grabbing results have been subsequently reduced by court on legal grounds. Some advocacy groups are claiming that the chemical’s presence extends beyond weed killers.   For example, the Environmental Working Group recently conducted a study that purports to…

What started out as a proposed merger between two of the largest packaged seafood manufacturers spawned a lengthy criminal investigation into antitrust violations in the tuna industry by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and multiple class and individual civil lawsuits. After four years of litigation, a major development in the class action lawsuits occurred– the Court certified three putative classes. In 2015, the Department of Justice investigated a proposed merger between Thai Union Group P.C.L.…

Capitalizing on an increasingly health and environmentally conscious era, plant-based meat substitute companies are positioning themselves as the future of protein. On May 2, 2019, Beyond Meat became the first plant-based product company to go public. Its stock skyrocketed to become the highest performing first-day public offering in nearly two decades. Impossible Foods is also performing well. While the company is in no rush to go public, they just secured $300 million in their latest …

When it rains, it pours—and for the country’s largest protein producers, the downpour is coming in the form of high-profile antitrust lawsuits. Over the past few years, food giants like Tyson and JBS (majority owner of Pilgrim’s Pride) have been named as a defendant in price-fixing cases relating to chicken and pork. Now, Tyson, JBS and Cargill face claims asserted by both consumers and suppliers of beef. According to these new claims, the beef producers…