The Department of Justice (DOJ) has reached a settlement with three of the country’s major egg producers over an investigation into alleged manipulation of egg prices.
Egg prices hit record highs at the time, largely because of a bird flu epidemic that had forced farmers to slaughter more than 166 million birds, mostly egg-laying hens.
One dozen Grade A eggs cost an average of $5.90 in U.S. cities in February 2025, up 10.4 percent from a year prior, eclipsing January’s record-high price of $4.95.
Cal-Maine Foods, Versova, and Hickman’s Egg Ranch will pay $3.3 million in total and also donate 53 million eggs to food banks and nonprofit organizations across the participating states, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office, which worked with the DOJ on the case.
Cal-Maine Foods and Versova denied wrongdoing.
The New York attorney general’s June 29 statement said the investigation found that the companies “illegally coordinated for years to influence a daily price index for eggs, which artificially increased prices for retailers and consumers throughout the country.”
“When powerful corporations collude behind the scenes to raise prices, working families suffer the costs,” James’s office said.
“These egg producers manipulated the market to squeeze even more profit out of consumers and businesses. By shutting this scheme down and delivering millions of eggs to those in need, we’re sending a clear message that companies will not get away with illegal price hikes in New York.”
The investigation found that from June 2022 to March 2025, the “egg producers secretly communicated with each other to coordinate their bidding activity and influence the daily egg price quotes published by Urner Barry, a benchmark pricing service widely used in egg supply contracts.”
The office said that, for example, in December 2022, Hickman’s CEO emailed Versova and Cal-Maine executives urging them to submit “strong bids, early and often” to “push prices higher.”
“All three companies then submitted dozens of bids at higher prices, which led to Urner Barry increasing its price quotes,” it said.
It said that by “manipulating” the Urner Barry benchmark, the companies “artificially inflated the price of eggs paid by retailers and consumers across the nation.”
“Under the settlement, all three companies must end their illegal coordination to manipulate prices, adopt compliance measures to prevent future violations, and fully cooperate with oversight by the states,” it stated.
In a June 29 statement, Cal-Maine said that it “denies all wrongdoing and violations of law and continues to believe that such claims are baseless.” The company claimed that its conduct “was lawful, appropriate and in the best interest of supplying eggs to the marketplace.”
“Cal-Maine further maintains that the company’s communications cited in the complaint—which were made primarily by a single former employee—did not impact egg prices in any market,” it said.
Sherman Miller, president and chief executive officer of Cal-Maine Foods, said that the period reviewed by the DOJ was a “particularly challenging time.”
“Temporary supply shocks, including in connection with multiple outbreaks of avian influenza, the COVID-19 pandemic, weather and other market dynamics, compounded by high inflation at the time, caused egg prices to surge periodically over the past five years,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Versova told The Epoch Times by email, “We are pleased the US Department of Justice investigation has been resolved without any finding of or admission of wrongdoing.”
She said that Versova and its family of companies “have lost more than 25 million egg-laying hens since the current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, called HPAI or bird flu, began in 2022.”
“This is not only devastating for our farms and our employees, but it also decimated the US egg supply, disrupted the egg market, and caused extreme volatility in egg prices,” she said.
She also said that egg farmers in the United States don’t set the wholesale price of eggs, which are a commodity product.
“At Versova, most of our eggs are sold on grain-based contracts, which means the price our customers pay fluctuates based on the costs of grain inputs for hen feed,” the spokeswoman said.
The Epoch Times contacted Hickman’s Egg Ranch for comment but received no response by publication time.
