Agribusinesses exploit poultry contract growers to hold down costs and maximize company profits. The growers—the farmers who actually do the work of producing the birds—assume the risks of the business, while the big companies who contract them reap the profits of the labor and avoid liability.
FarmSTAND, along with Antimonopoly Counsel, the Brad Hendricks Law Firm, and TFPC, represent farmers who are suing the four principal executive officers behind the food startup Cooks Venture. These farmers were manipulated, lied to, and led into financial ruin by the defendant businessmen. The now-bankrupt Cooks Venture had promised to “disrupt” agriculture by rapidly scaling production and distribution of heirloom-bred, pasture-raised chickens. But in reality, the Wall Street-driven defendants induced dozens of farmers across the Ozark countryside to mortgage farms and homes, acquire and prepare broiler houses, and produce birds for the company – all while hiding the company’s unsustainable business outlook.
During Thanksgiving 2023, Cooks Venture informed growers of its permanent shutdown in just ten days. At Cook’s Venture’s request and without legal authority, Arkansas officials then entered the growers’ farms, seized and euthanized hundreds of thousands of chickens with a scalding, suffocating chemical foam, and left the piled bodies for farmers to dispose of. The farmers were never paid for these final flocks they produced and were never supplied with more birds to raise, leaving them with lost income and no way to pay off the investments they had made based on Cooks Venture’s promises. The actions of Cooks Venture’s executives were unjust and illegal under the Packers & Stockyards Act. This is the first lawsuit to challenge these unfair practices after the Biden Administration finalized updated regulations on the Packers & Stockyards Act.