Where a shopper bought pork decides whether a claim on the $117 million price-fixing fund is possible at all. The administrator limits the class to 23 states and Washington, D.C., covers purchases made between June 28, 2014 and June 30, 2018, and closes the claim window on October 29, 2026, which leaves four weeks.
A claim window that closes October 29. The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice and a step-by-step filing walkthrough, two parts that suit a notice carrying several dates.
Work through a settlement notice’s dates ahead of the October 29 close →
Twenty-three states and one district
The administrator’s FAQ restricts the class to purchases in what it calls repealer jurisdictions, a term the page uses without defining. The list names Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia, plus the District of Columbia. That is 23 states and D.C., or 24 jurisdictions in all.
The administrator’s home page asks about pork bought “in the United States,” which can read as nationwide. The FAQ’s list is the narrower and controlling statement of who is in the class, so a shopper in a state that is absent from it, such as Texas or Ohio, is outside the settlement even though the pork came from the same producers.
The FAQ also lists who is excluded: the defendants, their officers, directors and employees, any entity in which a defendant holds a controlling interest, any affiliate or heir of a defendant, and federal, state and local governmental entities. For ordinary households the exclusions rarely matter, and the state list does most of the sorting.
Where the $117.065 million comes from
The fund is the sum of separate payments by the settling defendants, according to the settlement’s home page. Tyson Foods pays $85 million, Clemens Food Group $13.5 million, Seaboard Foods $10 million, Hormel Foods $4.465 million and Triumph Foods $4.1 million. Added together, $85 million, $13.5 million, $10 million, $4.465 million and $4.1 million make $117.065 million.
Agri Stats, the sixth settling defendant, makes no payment and instead agrees to business practice reforms. Earlier settlements with JBS and Smithfield are closed and are not part of this round. The case is the Consumer Indirect Purchaser Pork Litigation in the federal court in Minnesota.
Four years of grocery runs, and no receipt at the door
The covered period is June 28, 2014 through June 30, 2018, for pork bought for personal consumption. Few households keep grocery receipts for four years, and the claim page addresses that directly: “You do not need to provide any documentation at this time. However, the Settlement Administrator may ask for additional information or documentation to support your claim.” The claim form asks for purchase information instead.
What a claim is worth is undetermined. The FAQ says “at this time, it is unknown how much each Class Member that submits a timely and valid Claim Form will receive,” because payments depend on how many valid claims arrive and are divided pro rata. Cash is provided only “after the Settlements are approved by the Court and become final.”
One date for claiming, opting out and objecting, then a December hearing
October 29, 2026 is the deadline for three different actions. A claim must be submitted online or postmarked that day. A request to opt out must be postmarked that day, and so must an objection. The three choices point in different directions: filing a claim joins the settlement, opting out preserves the right to sue the defendants separately, and objecting tells the court the deal should not be approved.
The fairness hearing follows on December 11, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. Central time before Judge John R. Tunheim in Minneapolis, at 300 South Fourth Street, Suite 202. Attendance can be in person, by telephone or by video. Questions go to the administrator at 1-888-287-5434 or [email protected].
A class drawn along state lines and a purchase history no one kept
The first difficulty is geography. The class is a list of jurisdictions rather than the country, so a household must establish where the pork was actually bought, not only where its members live now. A shopper who has moved across a state line since 2018, or who bought groceries in a neighboring state, has to sort purchases by the place of sale against the list of 23 states and D.C. None of the pages read for this article says how the administrator will check a stated place of purchase.
The second is memory. The window covers four years of ordinary grocery buying, with no receipts and no product-by-product ledger, and the form asks for purchase information that the claimant has to reconstruct. The third is the calendar: the claim deadline sits beside the opt-out and objection dates on the same notice, and only the claim deadline matters to a shopper who wants to be paid. Filing directly with the administrator is free and needs no paid help.
The administrator’s pages are the controlling record: the $117.065 million fund, the October 29, 2026 deadline, the June 28, 2014 to June 30, 2018 window and the list of 24 jurisdictions come from its home page and FAQ.
Reading a notice with several dates and no receipts
A claim period that stretches over years, a class limited by state and a notice carrying more than one deadline leave a claimant sorting dates and purchases from memory. Telling the claim deadline apart from the other dates is part of getting a filing in on time.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice and a claim log and payment tracker, for separating the dates that matter and recording each filing.
Record each state, date and claim filed in one claim log →
Drafted with AI assistance, this article was checked against the administrator’s pages before it went out.
