Meet The “Gardening Blogger” Who May Have Overcharged Americans Billions For Supermarket Chicken

Billions of dollars worth of chicken are sold in the United States each year through various supermarket chains. Given the shear volume of chicken sales, most Americans simply take for granted that the prices are set based a transparent, competitive marketplace of buyers and sellers. Certainly, before now, not many would have guessed that their grocery bills for poultry were being determined by a single, self-described “gardening blogger” from the Georgia Department of Agriculture. Unfortunately, it’s looking increasingly like that is exactly what happened and it likely resulted in Americans being overcharged billions of dollars for chicken purchased in supermarkets.
When it comes to chicken pricing, there is very little infrastructure and processes in place to determine a truly “market price” for poultry. Per the Washington Post, a significant portion of chicken sold to retailers is actually priced off an index maintained by the Georgia Department of Agriculture which is frequently referred to as the “Georgia Dock” price. And while that may sound “official,” we’re now finding out that the Georgia Dock price has been unilaterally set by a single, untrained, “gardening blogger” based on a survey of just a couple local producers who refused to provide backup for their pricing.
While many chicken companies and retailers are secretive about how they set prices for buying and selling chicken, some very large players have acknowledged that the Georgia Dock is the basis of, or a factor in, the price they pay for chicken. ‘Over time, most retail grocery customers and their suppliers have come to trust the Georgia Dock whole bird price quoted weekly by the Georgia Department of Agriculture as the most reliable reflection of the supply and demand dynamics of the fresh chicken market,’ officials at Sanderson Farms, one of the nation’s largest chicken producers, wrote to the SEC earlier this year.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Nov 24, 2016.