“Lack of competition in the poultry industry is allowing these massive companies to squeeze both American consumers and farmers to fuel record corporate profits and payouts to shareholders,” Warren said this week in a statement.

She added, “When companies have monopoly power as massive suppliers, they can jack up prices of the goods they sell. And when those same companies have complete or substantial market power as large employers or buyers of inputs, also known as monopsony power, they can suppress their own costs for those inputs, including workers’ wages. This is the worst of all worlds, where wages are held back while prices are jacked up.”

Not content simply to accuse Big Poultry of a holiday-timed conspiracy to line its pockets at the expense of consumers, the senator also called for a criminal investigation of the alleged turkey-gouge plot.

“Given the apparent connection between rising poultry prices for consumers and the history of anti-competitive practices in the poultry industry,” the senator said, “I ask that [the Department of Justice] open a broad investigation into the impact of price fixing, wage fixing, and consolidation in the poultry industry on consumers and farmers.”