Farmers file suit against Cooks Venture

Attorneys representing a group of 13 poultry growers, including several in Carroll County, have filed a complaint in federal court against current and former officers of Cooks Venture Inc. and two of its subsidiaries.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, Sept. 25, in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville. Among the plaintiffs are Carroll County poultry farmers Dustin Maybee, Melissa Barr, Johnnie Bunch, Lance Logan and Leslie Harp. Another plaintiff in the suit is Lakeview Farms LLC, which is owned by Carroll County farmer Richard Butterbaugh and several family members.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Cooks Venture co-founders Matthew Wadiak and Blake Evans, former chief operations officer Tim Singleton and former chief executive officer John Niemann.

Cooks, based in Decatur, shut down suddenly in November 2023, leaving contract growers without feed for their chickens. More than a million birds were subsequently euthanized at the direction of Patrick Fisk, director of the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission. The birds were then left for the farmers to dispose of.

At a meeting on Dec. 7, 2023, in Green Forest, Fisk said he made the decision to euthanize the birds after receiving calls from growers who were unable to feed them or were forced to ration feed.

Fisk said the state “decided to step in from a humanitarian standpoint.”

Some growers at the Green Forest meeting said they had enough feed for their chickens, but they were euthanized anyway. Fisk said Cooks Venture had agreed to assume responsibility for disposal of the birds that had been euthanized.

“What I’m hearing now is some of that’s not being done,” he said.

The lawsuit alleges that Cooks Venture “conspired with” Fisk to have the birds euthanized “under the false pretense of enforcing humane- treatment laws — all so Cooks Venture would not have to feed, process and pay for them.”

“It truly was shocking to me, what the state did,” said Basel Musarbash, managing attorney for Antimonopoly Counsel, which represents the plaintiffs along with FarmSTAND, the Brad Hendricks Law Firm and TFPC. “There was no legal justification for what the state did. No law supported what they did. There was no legal authority for them to go on these growers’ property and foam all of these chickens.

It invaded the constitutional rights of these farmers, and they did it all — as we allege in the complaint — at the request of and with the promise of reimbursement from Mr. Evans and Cooks Venture. It’s truly shocking.”

Maybee was quoted in a news release issued by FarmSTAND the day the lawsuit was filed.

“I grew up in poultry farming,” the release quotes Maybee as saying. “It was a big decision to change my career to buy back the farm with the poultry houses my dad built. In Cooks Venture, I thought I had the right partner and not a scammer. But if I’d known what I wish I had known about the people running Cooks Venture, I wouldn’t have signed.”

The release says Cooks Venture “induced” Maybee to take on over $400,000 in debt.

Butterbaugh, a longtime Carroll County grower, told the Carroll County News in a telephone interview in 2023 that some of his chickens were removed rather than being euthanized.

“They took our birds, really, really small,” Butterbaugh said. “We don’t know where they went, nor what happened to them.”

Butterbaugh said the “normal catching crew from Cooks and the normal trucking company,” showed up to take his birds.

“I asked the trucking company where they were going with my birds and I got no reply,” Butterbaugh said. “The only answer I got was: ‘When I get to the blacktop, I’m supposed to call.’ ” Butterbaugh said a neighbor sent him a video recording of some birds being euthanized by “foaming.”

“I watched it for about five seconds, and then I said ‘I can’t handle this,’ ” Butterbaugh said.

Butterbaugh said many of the local growers for Cooks made significant investments for equipment and retrofitting houses to meet the company’s requirements. He said growers had no inkling that the company was facing financial jeopardy.

“As a matter of fact, on two occasions I had representatives of Cooks in my living room, telling me how things were going, how prosperous they were, how much they were growing, how many stockholders had come on. Everything was good, fine and dandy, keep on truckin’. As a matter of fact, they were still signing contracts for growers the Friday before they shut down.”

State officials denied a request by state Sen. Bryan King of Green Forest to declare an emergency in December 2023.King issued a formal letter to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders urging her to declare a state of emergency that would allow the state to provide financial compensation for growers and other businesses affected by the Cooks shutdown and the euthanizations.

“We need to provide full compensation to the growers, feed suppliers, and any entity related to helping this situation,” King wrote in his letter to the governor. “The company is under financial duress, and at this time, the state needs to assume responsibility. It is my hope the state can recoup the cost at a later date.”

Wes Ward, secretary of the state Department of Agriculture, responded to King’s request, writing that “because the proper role of government does not include state assumption of private debts, your request has been respectfully declined.”

King said he should have been notified by agriculture officials that the euthanizations were being planned.

“They were contacted the day before Thanksgiving,” he said. “They never called me. They should have called the senator. We all know that. They were going to take the company line right off the bat. That’s what they’ve done.”

The lawsuit filed last week, which includes 112 pages, alleges that Cooks and its officers violated the federal Packers and Stockyards Act. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages, plus interest, for each plaintiff, as well as court costs and attorney’s fees.

“Holding the people behind Cooks Venture accountable in court is important, and so is reining in larger agribusiness firms that exploit poultry contract growers as a standard business practice,” David Muraskin, litigation director at Farm-STAND and counsel for the plaintiffs, said in the FarmSTAND news release. “In order to bring about a food system that’s better for farmers, animals, and consumers, we need to make an example of all companies that falsely claim to be doing things the right way.”

“There was no legal justification for what the state did. No law supported what they did. There was no legal authority for them to go on these growers’ property and foam all of these chickens. It invaded the constitutional rights of these farmers, and they did it all — as we allege in the complaint — at the request of and with the promise of reimbursement from Mr. Evans and Cooks Venture. It’s truly shocking.”

— Basel Musharbash Managing attorney for Antimonopoly Counsel