In October of this year, the company producing chickens Agrosuper, Agrícola Don Pollo and Ariztía, confirmed the conviction of chicken producers Agrosuper, Agrícola Don Pollo and Ariztía, for colluding for years to limit the production of chicken meat offered to the domestic market and to allocate shares in the production and marketing market for that product, artificially inflating prices to the detriment of consumers.
It is the largest case of proven collusion that has occurred in the history of Chile.
Indeed, the injury to consumers is estimated to be about USD 1.5 billion (one billion dollars), or about four times the damage caused by the collusion of toilet paper.
To top it all off, in this case collusion did not result in an expendable or easily replaceable product, but is the lowest-cost animal protein and, therefore, constitutes the type of meat most consumed by the lowest-income population in the country.
Had a case like this occurred in the U.S., the owners of chicken-producing companies would certainly still be in jail and, moreover, would have had to pay substantial compensation to the affected consumers. In Chile, on the other hand, its owners did not go to jail, nor have they resarmed consumers at one weight for this gigantic damage.
This was the case, since at that time collusion was not a criminally sanctioned crime; and, from a civil point of view, the 29th Civil Court of Santiago rejected the action brought by the Sernac at the time, where reparation for the damage caused was sought and the same fate had been the action that Conadecus brought with the same objective, since it was also dismissed at first instance by the Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia (TDLC) , pending the decision by the Supreme Court of the appeal seeking to reverse such a decision.
If consumers were not compensated, for Agrosuper, Agricultural Don Pollo and Ariztía, paradoxically, the best commercial decision they could have taken was precisely to have colluded.
