In 2020, Nelson Roach and Michael L. Silverman filed an antitrust class action against Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson Foods, Koch Foods, and other major members of the U.S. chicken-processing industry. The complaint alleged that the corporations acted as a cartel, colluding with one another and engaging in other illegal activity to reduce competition among the small farms hired by the defendants to raise poultry.

In The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business, investigative journalist Christopher Leonard argued that the processing companies deliberately kept the chicken growers “in a state of indebted servitude, living like modern-day sharecroppers on the ragged edge of bankruptcy.”

In 2022, Tyson Foods and Koch Foods settled the claims for a total of $51.2 million. The Roach Law Firm is still engaged in active litigation with Pilgrim’s Pride and other defendants, and Roach and Silverman serve on the steering committee of In Re: Broiler Chicken Grower Antitrust Litigation, a consolidation of similar cases from around the nation.