When egg prices soared between 2022 and 2025, the Washington Monthly reported that something seemed afoot. Yes, the bird flu was wiping out egg-laying hens, but egg prices rose much more than economists would predict given the decrease in supply. We reported that dominant egg corporations may be manipulating a price index tied to most commercial egg contracts. On Monday, the Department of Justice and a group of bipartisan state attorneys general agreed. They concluded a months-long investigation into companies like Cal-Maine, alleging that these corporations colluded to exploit the bird flu crisis and drive up egg prices, cheating consumers. Cal-Maine, Hickman’s Egg Ranch, and Versova will donate 53 million eggs to food banks and pay up to $3.3 million to state attorneys general.
The DOJ and State AGs’ complaint exposes a multi-pronged effort by egg executives to manipulate key pricing pegs in the egg industry, published by a company called the Urner Barry. Urner Barry is a market intelligence corporation that publishes food price benchmarks for eggs and other foods. It does so by monitoring transactions in the small daily cash market for eggs and collecting additional pricing information from egg sellers and buyers to determine how much companies charge or pay for eggs on a given day. Many commercial egg contracts are tied to Urner Barry’s price benchmarks.
Egg executives allegedly coordinated to drive up Urner Barry’s benchmarks in several ways. First, egg executives communicated with each other about their daily bids in the small but meaningful egg spot market. While most eggs are sold on contract, around 10 percent are sold as uncommitted eggs in the cash market and the biggest open exchange is the Egg Clearinghouse. DOJ alleges that egg executives purposefully increased the number and value of their bids in the Egg Clearinghouse to raise prices and to send a signal to Urner Barry’s market reporters. Executives acknowledged that Urner Barry is more likely to raise its price index if it sees multiple companies placing higher bids, according to communications obtained by antitrust enforcers.
“Consider posting strong bids, early and often. The market reporters don’t get in for another hour, so it will be good for them to see diverse bidding upon logging on,” Hickman’s CEO e-mailed several competitors, including Cal-Maine and Versova. “[W]e are bidding up. Let’s hold it today,” a Cal-Maine executive texted Hickman’s CEO.
Second, egg executives allegedly paid premiums to buy eggs from each other, creating higher-value transactions that Urner Barry’s price reporter could “hang her hat on” as evidence of rising prices, as one Cal-Maine executive put it. Finally, the DOJ claims that egg companies directly lobbied Urner Barry to increase its egg price quotations, urging the index to ignore lower prices from some competitors.
Consumers know all too well what happened next. As egg corporations fed higher prices into Urner Barry, prices rose across all egg contracts tied to the index, and the self-perpetuating spiral drove up prices. Egg prices hit record highs between 2022 and 2025. Cal-Maine’s net income ballooned to $1.2 billion in 2025, increasing by over 300 percent, and its stock value more than doubled. In 2025, Cal-Maine spent $450 million buying stock from its founder’s daughters as they cashed out their shares at peak value.
Cal-Maine admits no wrongdoing as part of this agreement and will pay $1.5 million and donate 30 million eggs to states to resolve the DOJ’s and State AGs’ claims—a relatively small price to pay for hundreds of millions in alleged ill-gotten profits.
Cal-Maine, Hickman’s, and Versova all agreed to cease sharing information about their bidding strategies or prices with competitors, directly or indirectly, and to adopt other measures to prohibit anticompetitive coordination. They must create an antitrust compliance policy, hire an internal antitrust compliance officer, and regularly certify to the DOJ and State AGs that they are abiding by the agreement.
This agreement and oversight may prevent future price-fixing; however, antitrust consent decrees are notoriously hard to enforce. Meanwhile, the egg industry remains consolidated, with Cal-Maine controlling roughly 20 percent of all eggs in the U.S. Millions of free eggs for food-insecure families are significant, but without structural market changes, dominant food corporations may live to gouge another day.
