Case Description
JBS, headquartered in Brazil, sought to acquire National Beef Packing, Inc., headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. The U.S. Department of Justice and 13 states sued to block the transaction, which, according to the complaint, would substantially restructure the beef packing industry, eliminating a competitively significant packer and placing more than 80 percent of domestic fed cattle packing capacity in the hands of three firms: JBS, Tyson Foods Inc., and Cargill Inc. The complaint alleged that the acquisition would lessen competition among packers in the production and sale of USDA-graded boxed beef nationwide and would lessen competition among packers for the purchase of fed cattle “cattle ready for slaughter” in the High Plains, centered in Colorado, western Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, and the Southwest. In February 2009, the parties announced that they were abandoning the transaction.
