Butterball has agreed to a $34m settlement to resolve allegations the US poultry producer conspired to inflate turkey prices.

A motion seeking preliminary approval of the agreement was submitted by plaintiffs on 21 August in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Butterball had been the final remaining direct-purchaser defendant in the anti-trust case. The settlement brings the protracted legal battle to a close before its scheduled jury trial in October.

According to court documents hosted on the Bloomberg Law site, the Butterball settlement, if approved, will take the total amount recovered to around $130.7m across all settling defendants.

Just Food has approached Butterball for comment.

Other defendants include Cargill, which agreed to a $32.5m settlement, while Prestage Foods and House of Raeford Farms agreed to payouts of $15m and $3.7m, respectively.

Food distributors and wholesalers brought a class action against the companies in December 2019.

They alleged that turkey suppliers relied on information supplied by Agri Stats, including data on sales, production levels and capacity, to co-ordinate output reductions and keep turkey prices artificially elevated.

“As a result of defendants’ unlawful conduct, plaintiffs and the class paid artificially inflated prices for turkey during the class period. Such prices exceeded the amount they would have paid if the price for turkey had been determined by a competitive market,” the plaintiffs alleged.

In October 2020, US district judge Virginia Kendall rejected attempts by the defendants to have the case dismissed.