Agriculture and Food

Agriculture and Food

Antitrust and Competition Counsel for the Food Supply Chain

From the farm gate to the federal courthouse. The seed company, the cooperative, the processor, the trade association, and the food manufacturer all face the same antitrust laws — and the same DOJ.

Bona Law represents companies operating across the full food supply chain — farm cooperatives, growers and producer associations, mid-market meat, poultry, dairy, and seafood processors, food and beverage manufacturers, food and feed additive companies, ag-input and crop-input suppliers, ag-tech and ag-data platforms, and the trade associations that organize them. We counsel on antitrust risk, design compliance programs calibrated to Capper-Volstead and Packers and Stockyards Act exposure, advise on trade-association and information-exchange practices, and represent clients in private antitrust litigation, class actions and MDLs, and government investigations when they arise.

Agriculture and food is a priority enforcement sector for the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The December 2025 Executive Order on Addressing Security Risks from Price Fixing and Anti-Competitive Behavior in the Food Supply Chain stood up Food Supply Chain Security Task Forces at both DOJ and FTC. The 2025 DOJ–USDA Memorandum of Understanding on agricultural competition formalized interagency coordination. Acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed Assefi has put it plainly: “Enforcement in agriculture is a top priority for the Antitrust Division.” And state attorneys general — most prominently in California, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, and elsewhere — have made agriculture a permanent part of their competition agendas.


Featured Analysis

The Capper-Volstead Act Gives Farm Cooperatives a Limited Exemption from Antitrust Liability →

Author: Aaron Gott. Covers the conditions for the exemption, the rule that every member must qualify (National Broiler Marketing Association v. United States and In re Mushroom Direct Purchaser Antitrust Litigation), the conduct the exemption does and does not cover, and the compliance audit every cooperative should run. Companion pieces address Capper-Volstead production restraints in a market shock and the Packers and Stockyards Act enforcement landscape.


Representative Experience

In re Turkey Antitrust Litigation (N.D. Ill., No. 1:19-cv-08318). Defense of Foster Farms, a processor defendant, in a nationwide turkey-processing price-fixing class action involving allegations of an industry-wide pricing conspiracy and Agri Stats data exchange. 

McWhite-York v. Foster Farms, LLC (E.D. Cal.). Defense of Foster Farms in a proposed nationwide consumer class action arising from the 2025 recall of chicken and turkey corn-dog products.

Egg-Producer State Price-Gouging Class Actions (multiple federal courts). Defense of a major egg producer in multiple class actions alleging violations of state price-gouging laws during periods of supply disruption, defending the producer’s pricing practices across overlapping state-law regimes.

People v. Vitol Inc., et al. (S.F. Superior Court). Outside trial counsel for the California Attorney General’s Office in a state antitrust action against global gasoline trading firms alleging manipulation of California commodity-price indices in violation of California’s Cartwright Act and Unfair Competition Law. Resolved in a $50 million settlement. The engagement reflects the unusual posture of a state attorney general retaining a private antitrust boutique to prosecute state antitrust claims on the government’s behalf. 

Agricultural Trade Association — Antitrust Counseling. Antitrust counseling for an agricultural trade association. 

Dairy Cooperative — Capper-Volstead Act Counseling. Antitrust counseling for a dairy cooperative on the scope and limits of the agricultural-cooperative antitrust exemption. 

Agricultural Producer Cooperative — Capper-Volstead Act Counseling. Antitrust counseling for an agricultural producer cooperative on the scope and limits of the Capper-Volstead exemption. 

Capper-Volstead Counseling Memorandum. Formal counseling memorandum analyzing the scope and application of the Capper-Volstead Act antitrust exemption for an agricultural cooperative client. 

Trade Association Antitrust Compliance — Sustainable Paper-Based Packaging. Antitrust compliance counseling for a leading global manufacturer of sustainable paper-based packaging in connection with its trade-association participation.

Cartel MDL defense across food and agriculture. Our lawyers have also held defense roles in landmark cartel MDLs including In re Amino Acid Lysine Antitrust Litigation and In re Processed Egg Products Antitrust Litigation, and in adjacent cartel matters including In re Vitamins, In re Citric Acid, In re Cathode Ray Tubes, In re Lithium Ion Batteries, and In re Automotive Parts.

Crownalytics, LLC v. SPINS, LLC, et al. (D. Colo., prior representation). Section 1 group-boycott and tying and Section 2 conspiracy-to-monopolize claims on behalf of a data analytics firm in the natural and organic consumer-packaged-goods market against retail-data rivals SPINS, DAAP, and Circana. The court denied defendants’ motions to dismiss.


Our Agriculture and Food Antitrust Team

  • Aaron Gott (Partner / Chief Operating Officer, Minneapolis). Lead counsel for Foster Farms in In re Turkey Antitrust Litigation. Defended a major egg producer in multiple state price-gouging class actions. Counsels agricultural trade associations, dairy cooperatives, and producer cooperatives on Capper-Volstead and information-exchange compliance. Served as general counsel to a regional ice cream company. Author of the Antitrust Attorney Blog’s Capper-Volstead, farm-cooperative production-restraint, Packers and Stockyards Act enforcement, and Bayer seed-loyalty pieces. Chair, Minnesota State Bar Association Antitrust Law Section Council, 2026–27 term. Best Lawyers — Antitrust Litigation, Minneapolis.
  • Pat Pascarella (Partner / General Counsel, Dallas). Former Chief Antitrust Counsel at AT&T and former member of the DOJ Antitrust Telecommunications Task Force. Outside trial counsel for the California Attorney General in People v. Vitol, the state commodity-price-manipulation matter resolved in a $50 million settlement. 2026 Best Lawyers in America.
  • Jim Lerner (Partner / Director of Litigation, New York). Co-Lead counsel for Foster Farms in In re Turkey Antitrust Litigation and McWhite-York v. Foster Farms, LLC. Over three decades of cartel-MDL defense at Winston & Strawn, Dewey & LeBoeuf, and Weil Gotshal. Defended a global manufacturer of food and feed additives in direct purchaser and indirect purchaser MDL class actions in In re Amino Acid Lysine Antitrust Litigation — historically the foundational U.S. food-input cartel case and the spine of the DOJ Antitrust Division’s modern criminal cartel program.
  • Jarod M. Bona (Founder / CEO / Partner, San Diego). Class-action-defense pedigree from Gibson Dunn and DLA Piper across cartel MDLs including In re Processed Egg Products Antitrust Litigation, packaged ice, municipal derivatives, insurance brokerage, and wholesale electricity. 
  • Jon Cieslak (Partner, San Diego). Co-Lead Counsel for Foster Farms in McWhite-York v. Foster Farms, LLC. Counsels agriculture trade association.
  • Steve Cernak (Partner, Detroit). Twenty years in-house antitrust at General Motors with global compliance, merger, and litigation responsibility. Immediate Past Chair of the ABA Antitrust Law Section. Long-standing trade-association and information-exchange counseling experience that translates directly to ag-input, ag-equipment, and food-and-beverage industry consortia.
  • Luis Blanquez (Partner, San Diego). Fifteen years at the European Commission’s DG-Competition Merger Task Force and in EU competition firms. Vice Chair, ABA Antitrust Section Distribution and Franchising Committee. Recognized with the Mondaq Spring 2026 Thought Leadership Award.
  • Paul Moore (Partner, San Diego). Author of the firm’s Inside State Enforcement newsletter tracking the California Attorney General’s antitrust division. Former Antitrust Attorney with California AG.
  • Joseph Trujillo (Partner, San Diego). Stanford Law and a Northern District of California clerkship; prior experience at Dechert and Orrick. Complex competition litigator with industry work spanning technology, finance, insurance, manufacturing, and energy, among others.
  • Kristen Harris (Of Counsel, San Diego). Antitrust attorney with experience in government investigations, private litigation, and regulatory matters across multiple industries. Outside trial counsel to the California Attorney General in a $50 million price-fixing settlement. Vice Chair, ABA Antitrust Section Trade, Sports and Professional Associations Committee.
  • Ruth Glaeser (Attorney, Minneapolis). Former Minnesota Farmers Union clerk at the Antitrust Division of the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General and current counsel for Foster Farms in In re Turkey Antitrust Litigation. Moderated the Minnesota Attorney General’s panel on Supporting and Protecting Robust Competition in Minnesota’s Meat and Poultry Industry” in April 2023. 


Speaking and Bar Leadership in the Agricultural Antitrust Bar

Bona Law’s agriculture and food antitrust work is grounded in active bar leadership in the markets where it matters.

Minnesota State Bar Association Antitrust Law Section Council — 2026–27 Chair. Aaron Gott was elected Chair of the MSBA Antitrust Law Section Council for the 2026–27 term. Minneapolis is the densest cluster of ag-industry headquarters in the United States and the MSBA Antitrust Section sits at the center of that bar.

ABA Antitrust Section Capper-Volstead and Production-Restraint Panels. Aaron Gott has paneled on the Capper-Volstead exemption and farm-cooperative production restraints at both the Minnesota State Bar Association CLE (March 2021) and the American Bar Association CLE (November 2021). He has spoken on antitrust topics on KRVN/Rural Radio Network reaching the agricultural Midwest (Agriculture and Antitrust, November 2019) and KMSP-TV FOX 9 All Day (Ticketmaster/Live Nation Verdict). 

Minnesota Attorney General’s Office Meat and Poultry Panel. Ruth Glaeser moderated the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office Antitrust Division’s CLE on competition in Minnesota’s meat and poultry industries (April 2023). 

ABA Antitrust Section leadership. Steven Cernak is the immediate Past Chair of the ABA Antitrust Law Section. Kristen Harris serves as Vice Chair of the Section’s Trade, Sports and Professional Associations Committee. Luis Blanquez serves as Vice Chair of the Section’s Distribution and Franchising Committee.


Recent Developments

Ag antitrust is moving quickly in 2026. On June 6, 2026, Aaron Gott published When Loyalty Programs Become Antitrust Problems: DOJ’s Bayer Seed Investigation, analyzing DOJ’s resolution of its investigation into Bayer CropScience’s Premier Performance Program — a seed-company loyalty program that conditioned discounts on both corn and soybean seed volume targets and included terms that disincentivized seed companies from licensing competitors’ genetics. The matter illustrates how DOJ is applying tying, exclusive-dealing, and Section 2 exclusionary-conduct doctrine to concentrated ag-input markets — a doctrinal pattern that extends naturally to fertilizer, crop chemicals, ag equipment, and animal pharmaceuticals.

For ongoing analysis, see The Antitrust Attorney Blog’s Agriculture category and Paul Moore’s Inside State Enforcement newsletter tracking the California Attorney General’s expanded antitrust division.


The Opportunity — and the Antitrust Risk

The American food supply chain is among the most concentrated in the U.S. economy. Concentration creates real efficiencies — but it also creates antitrust risk on every link in the chain.

Where antitrust risk arises in agriculture and food

  • Cartel and price-fixing exposure. Concentrated markets create potential exposure for price-fixing and market allocations allegations, regardless of merit. 
  • Loyalty programs, tying, and exclusive dealing in concentrated input markets. DOJ’s Bayer resolution shows how tying corn and soybean discounts together, or financially disincentivizing seed companies from licensing competitor genetics, can draw Sherman § 1 tying, § 2 monopolization, and Clayton § 3 conditional-sales scrutiny. Seeds, traited genetics, fertilizer, crop-chemicals, ag equipment, and animal pharmaceuticals all sit in the same risk zone.
  • The Capper-Volstead exemption. The farm-cooperative exemption is limited, disfavored, and narrowly applied. A single misclassified member — In re Mushroom Direct Purchaser Antitrust Litigation turned on a packing entity that should never have been a cooperative member — can cost the cooperative the exemption and expose every member to per se Sherman § 1 liability. Audit-style compliance counseling is the right response.
  • Packers and Stockyards Act enforcement. The 2024 Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity rule, the November 2023 Live Poultry Dealer Disclosure rule, and the pending rulemaking after USDA’s withdrawal of the Biden-era Fair and Competitive Markets proposal continue to shape enforcement risk for processors and growers. Alternative marketing arrangements, captive supply, formula pricing, and tournament systems are all under scrutiny.
  • Section 2 monopolization in input and processor markets. Concentration in beef processing, vertical integration in poultry, dominant seed traits, fertilizer concentration, and platform consolidation in ag-equipment dealer networks all sit in the Section 2 zone. Monopsony in processor-grower contracting is the parallel theory on the buy side.
  • Information exchange among competitors. Trade associations, industry benchmarking, and competitor data exchanges remain subject to longstanding Sherman § 1 information-exchange doctrine. Compliance protocols for trade-association meetings, benchmarking practices, and member-conduct controls are a recurring area of counseling demand.
  • Robinson-Patman exposure in food retail. The Ninth Circuit’s recent Robinson-Patman affirmance and the FTC’s renewed interest in price-discrimination doctrine put grocers, distributors, and food manufacturers back on watch.
  • HSR and California pre-merger filings. The new California Uniform Antitrust Premerger Notification Act (SB 25), effective January 1, 2027, will add a state-level filing in addition to federal HSR for transactions with California nexus.
  • State-AG and multi-state coordination. California, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and others have made ag and food a permanent enforcement priority. Paul Moore’s Inside State Enforcement newsletter tracks California developments.
  • Algorithmic-pricing and ag-data platforms. The RealPage line of cases — and the Ninth Circuit’s 2025 ruling in Gibson v. Cendyn Group — separates lawful use of a common software tool from unlawful pooling of nonpublic competitor data fed back into shared outputs. California AB325 is the leading-edge signal.
  • Cross-border coordination. Many of the largest ag-related defendants and merger parties are global. Parallel review by the European Commission DG-Comp, the UK CMA, and the Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore competition authorities is the rule.
  • No-poach, wage-fixing, and processor-grower labor markets. DOJ Antitrust Division continues to treat naked no-poach and wage-fixing as per se illegal. The firm’s no-poach class-action defense practice and dedicated non-compete, non-solicitation, and no-hire counseling work directly into processor-grower restrictive-covenant questions.


How We Help Agriculture and Food Clients

  • Antitrust counseling on day-to-day business decisions — pricing programs, distribution, slotting and promotional allowances, MAP, exclusive dealing, joint marketing, supplier and grower contracts, captive supply and alternative marketing arrangements, tournament programs, and Robinson-Patman risk.
  • Capper-Volstead audits and counseling memoranda — including member-eligibility analysis (See National Broiler, Mushroom Direct Purchaser), output-restriction boundaries, marketing-agency arrangements, and ongoing exemption-availability auditing.
  • Packers and Stockyards Act counseling and defense — alternative marketing arrangements, formula pricing, captive supply, tournament systems, Live Poultry Dealer Disclosure obligations, and unfair-practice exposure under the 2024 Inclusive Competition rule.
  • Trade association and information-exchange compliance — meeting protocols, benchmarking, member-conduct controls, association governance, and information-exchange protocols.
  • Class action and MDL defense — across protein, dairy, eggs, food and feed additives, and CPG. Bona Law represents defendants as lead counsel and offers Antitrust Co-Counsel service for matters where another firm is already lead counsel.
  • Cartel investigations — DOJ Antitrust Division civil investigative demands, criminal investigations, leniency, and parallel international cartel proceedings, including for Japan- and EU-parented defendants in U.S. food and feed-additive markets.
  • Loyalty program, tying, and exclusive dealing review — Sherman § 1, Sherman § 2, and Clayton § 3 analysis of ag-input rebate programs, bundled discounts, and dealer-incentive structures (the Bayer Premier Performance Program pattern).
  • Ag-data, third-party platform, and algorithmic-pricing review — design-level antitrust review of subscription data services, benchmarking platforms, and algorithmic-pricing tools applied to ag commodities, calibrated to the RealPage / Yardi / Cendyn line of cases and California AB325.
  • No-poach, non-compete, and processor-grower labor-market counseling — including drafting, enforceability advice, and litigation of restrictive covenants between processors and growers.
  • Mergers and acquisitions — HSR premerger notification, the new California Uniform Antitrust Premerger Notification Act (effective January 1, 2027), Second Request defense, and coordination with foreign-authority filings before the European Commission, UK CMA, Japan FTC, Korea FTC, and other authorities.
  • State AG coordination — both directions. We have served as outside trial counsel for the California Attorney General in commodity-price-manipulation litigation (People v. Vitol), and we defend companies against state AG investigations. Paul Moore joined Bona Law directly from the California Attorney General’s office.
  • Cross-border coordination — through our international competition practice, we work alongside EU, UK, Latin American, and Asia-Pacific counsel on parallel ag-input cartel investigations, merger reviews, and abuse-of-dominance proceedings.


Recent Analysis from Bona Law

A selection of recent Bona Law writing on agriculture and food antitrust:

For the complete archive of Bona Law’s writing in this space, see The Antitrust Attorney Blog’s Agriculture category archive →


Why Bona Law for Agriculture and Food Antitrust

  • A boutique with BigLaw bench. Our attorneys trained at top BigLaw competition groups (Gibson Dunn, DLA Piper, Winston & Strawn, Dewey & LeBoeuf, Weil Gotshal, Cooley); served at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division; served as Chief Antitrust Counsel at AT&T; served twenty years in-house at General Motors with global antitrust responsibility; served as outside trial counsel for the California Attorney General; and served at the European Commission’s DG-Competition Merger Task Force.
  • Ag and food credentials. Counsel for Foster Farms in In re Turkey Antitrust Litigation and McWhite-York v. Foster Farms. Defense of egg producers across multiple federal districts. Active counseling representations of an agricultural trade association, a dairy cooperative, and an agricultural producer cooperative on Capper-Volstead and related compliance matters. Outside trial counsel for the California Attorney General in People v. Vitol. The most-cited practitioner blog series on the Capper-Volstead Act, authored by Aaron Gott.
  • Bar leadership in agriculture’s home jurisdiction. Aaron Gott serves as Chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association Antitrust Law Section Council for the 2026–27 term. Minneapolis is the densest cluster of agricultural-industry headquarters in the United States.
  • International reach. Through our international competition practice, we coordinate with EU, UK, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Latin American, and Australian counsel on parallel ag-input cartel investigations and merger reviews.
  • Conflict-free defense posture. We do not take plaintiff-side private class-action work in ag and food, which means we are free to defend companies and to team with existing trial counsel without competing for the rest of their business. Through our Antitrust Co-Counsel service, we can integrate into existing defense teams in roles from strategic advisor to lead trial counsel.
  • Recognition. Bona Law has been recognized in the Chambers Spotlight 2026 for California and New York. Our attorneys have been recognized by Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America©, Mondaq Thought Leadership, and the Litigation Counsel of America.

Contact Us

Bona Law represents companies across the food supply chain on antitrust counseling, compliance, mergers and acquisitions, investigations, and litigation. Contact us for an initial discussion.

Practice Areas

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