In 1902, George A. Archer and John W. Daniels began a linseed crushing business. In 1923, Archer-Daniels Linseed Company acquired Midland Linseed Products Company to form Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) Company. Today, ADMbills itself as the “supermarket to the world.” ADM is in the business of procuring, transporting, storing, processing, and merchandising agricultural commodities and related products. Some of ADM’s major divisions include corn processing, oils, produce, and grains. With processing plants on four continents and in forty-three countries, ADM is one of the largest transnational corporations operating in the agrifood sector.

ADM operated several price-fixing schemes that cost consumers millions through inflated prices for soft drinks, detergents, poultry, and many other products. Senior executives were indicted on criminal charges for engaging in price-fixing in the international lysine market. Lysine is one of the twenty amino acids normally found in proteins. It is an essential amino acid-that is, the human body cannot make it from other substances. A deficiency in lysine can result in a deficiency in niacin (a B vitamin). Therefore, lysine has emerged as one of the most widely used feed supplements worldwide.

ADM and four other companies, two each from Japan (Kyowa Hakko and Ajinomoto) and Korea (Sewon and Cheil Jedang Ltd.), produced lysine for the global market. Instead of competing with each other, two executives at ADM talked competitors into forming an “amino acids association.” The five companies agreed among themselves how much to charge their customers for lysine and how much each producer was permitted to sell annually. These agreements are illegal under U.S. antitrust laws as well as similar laws in many other countries. The businessmen within these five companies knew that they were doing was criminal. They did everything possible to keep the price-fixing conversations and meetings secret. An FBI informant, Mark Whitacre, former president of ADM’s bioproducts division, secretly made audio and video tapes of ADM meetings over the course of a two-and-a-half-year period. Michael Andreas, vice-chairman; Terrance Wilson, ADM executive; and Whitacre were each fined $350,000. Ironically, Whitacre, who pleaded guilty in 1997 to money laundering and tax fraud, received a much more severe sentence than those he exposed.

He was sentenced to nine years in prison, whereas Andreas was sentenced to three years in prison and Wilson received a 30-month sentence following appeals to the Supreme Court. Whitacre also had to pay $11.4 million in restitution to ADM and was sentenced to serve 30 months for price-fixing on top of his 9-year sentence for fraud. ADM was fined $100 million, the largest antitrust fine ever. ADM also paid $400 million to settle a class-action antitrust suit. Neither the CEO nor the president of ADM was pursued criminally. Judge Blanche Manning ruled that Whitacre was in charge of the price-fixing conspiracy, but the government’s investigation identified over forty-nine executives who had participated in the price-fixing conspiracy. The Japanese and Korean corporations were sentenced to pay fines ranging from $1.25 million to $10 million. Three executives from the Japanese and Korean corporations were sentenced to pay fines ranging from $50,000 to $75,000.