Photo: Aaron Piper/AP. Republican Senate candidate's family-owned egg company caught in price-fixing conspiracy
Several food giants have alleged that Rose Acre Farms — until recently led by John Rust — illegally fixed egg prices.
The Republican U.S. Senate candidate's family farming company was found guilty Tuesday of conspiracy to fix the situation. the price of eggs.
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Rose Acre Farms, which claims to be the second-largest egg producer in the country and was headed by John Rust, now a Senate candidate from Indiana, was accused in a civil lawsuit of cutting supplies to raise prices.
Food giants including Kraft, Kellog, General Mills and Nestle filed the lawsuit in Illinois federal court, alleging that between 1999 and 2008, Rose Acre and other manufacturers Cal-Maine Foods, United Egg Producers and United States Egg Marketers — «illegally agreed to and actually participated in a conspiracy to control supplies and artificially maintain and increase the price of eggs.»
The jury agreed, finding that the egg suppliers exported the eggs to reduce the U.S. supply. market, as well as limit the number of chickens, reduce flocks and slaughter chickens earlier than usual.
Food giants said that because they buy eggs, these measures hurt them because they artificially inflate the cost.
The court will consider the issue of compensation for damage starting from November 29.
Rust chaired Rose Acre's board of directors until September of this year, when his brother took over. His Senate bid faced setbacks: His opponent, Congressman Jim Banks, was endorsed by the Indiana Republican Party and, perhaps more importantly for GOP candidates, former President Donald Trump.
Rust is also suing Indiana over a law that could bar him from appearing on the ballot because it stipulates that candidates must vote in two primaries for the party they belong to or have their candidacy confirmed by the county party chairman. Rust did vote Republican in the 2016 primary, but voted in the Democratic primaries in 2006 and 2012, the Indianapolis Star reported.
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Banks used the jury's decision against his opponent. “Today’s verdict proves that John Rust is not just a con man pretending to be a Republican, he is a con man who is exploiting Hoosier workers throughout Indiana for his own financial gain,” Banks was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. «As Indiana families struggle to put food on the table, he's making it even harder.»
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