Victoria Bekiempis and agencies
Photograph: Aaron Piper/AP
The family farming company of a Republican candidate for the US Senate was found liable on Tuesday in a plot to fix the price of eggs.
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Rose Acre Farms, which claims to be the second-largest egg producer in the country and until September was chaired by John Rust – now running as a Senate candidate for Indiana – was accused in a civil suit of cutting supply to raise prices.
Food giants including Kraft, Kellog, General Mills and Nestlé filed the suit in Illinois federal court, arguing that between 1999 and 2008 Rose Acre and other producers – Cal-Maine Foods, United Egg Producers and United States Egg Marketers – “unlawfully agreed to and did engage in a conspiracy to control supply and artificially maintain and increase the price of eggs”.
Jurors agreed, finding that the egg suppliers had exported eggs to cut supply in the US market, as well as limiting the number of hens, reducing flocks and killing chickens earlier than they usually did.
The food giants argued that, as companies which buy eggs, these moves hurt them by artificially driving up their costs.
The court will consider damages starting on 29 November.
Rust chaired the board of Rose Acre until September of this year, when his brother took over. His candidacy for Senate has met setbacks: his opponent, Congressman Jim Banks, was endorsed by the Indiana Republican party and, perhaps more important for GOP candidates, by ex-president Donald Trump.
Rust is also suing Indiana over a statute that could bar him from appearing on the ballot, as it stipulates that candidates must vote in two primaries for the party with which they are affiliated, or else have their candidacy approved by a county party chair. Rust did cast his ballot as a Republican during the 2016 primary, but voted in Democratic primaries from 2006 and 2012, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Banks seized on the jury’s decision against his opponent. “Today’s verdict proves John Rust isn’t just a conman pretending to be a Republican, he is a crook who exploits working-class Hoosiers across Indiana for his own financial gain,” the Associated Press quoted Banks as saying. “While Indiana families struggle to put food on the table, he’s making it even harder to do that.”
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