Milk

Brattle economists were retained in a matter involving a program to restrict supply, which was sponsored by an agricultural cooperative, the National Milk Producers Federation, and other defendants. The “Herd Retirement Program” paid farmers to slaughter their milk herds and leave the market for a period of time. Brattle worked on behalf of a class of indirect purchasers to perform an econometric analysis to estimate the effect of the alleged anticompetitive conduct on the spread between prices and the federally mandated price floors set by the USDA (referred to as “over order premium”). A pass-through analysis was also performed to estimate the impact on retail prices for milk products on a state-by-state basis. The matter settled in 2016 for $52 million.