Three of the nation’s largest egg producers have agreed to settle antitrust claims brought by the Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general, who alleged the companies coordinated bids to inflate a wholesale egg benchmark price between 2022 and 2025.
Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch and Versova will donate more than 50 million eggs to food banks and pay $3.3 million to New York and other states that investigated the alleged misconduct, according to court records. The settlement requires court approval.
The government alleged the companies manipulated a benchmark price published by Urner Barry, a market data firm whose daily egg price quotes influence retail pricing across the country. Antitrust enforcers said that from 2022 to 2025, the producers communicated by phone and text message to coordinate their bidding activity and push the benchmark price higher.
Executives urged one another to “post strong bids, early and often,” according to the complaint. An unnamed executive at an egg cooperative described the approach as bidding “like they vote in Chicago, early and often.”
The companies also coordinated off-exchange egg trades at premium prices, which were then submitted to the firm that tallies the benchmark, authorities said.
The settlement arrives after a period when shoppers struggled to find eggs in stores and prices reached historic highs. Retail egg prices hit a record of more than $6 per dozen in spring 2025. They have since fallen sharply: prices averaged about $2 per dozen nationwide in May, down 35% from the same period a year earlier, according to the Labor Department.
The bird flu outbreak has killed roughly 200 million U.S. chickens, turkeys and egg-laying hens since it began in 2022, according to the Agriculture Department. The industry has denied price gouging, arguing the increases were a case of supply and demand with limited supply driving prices higher. Egg companies said they were largely unable to rebuild flocks amid ongoing outbreaks, holiday demand and panic buying by retailers, consumers and restaurants.
This past winter, the disease largely passed over large egg-laying hen farms that can house millions of birds, but still led to the death of millions of turkeys. Bird flu cases have since subsided, allowing producers to rebuild flocks and contributing to the decline in prices.
Cal-Maine and Versova each denied wrongdoing; Hickman’s former CEO declined to comment.
Cal-Maine, the country’s largest egg producer, said communications cited in the complaint were made by a former employee and did not affect egg prices. The company said its conduct was lawful and in the best interests of the market. “The period reviewed by the DOJ was a particularly challenging time,” Cal-Maine CEO Sherman Miller said in a statement.
Versova, which reported that about 25 million of its egg-laying hens died from bird flu, said it denies wrongdoing and reached the settlement to focus on its business. Glenn Hickman, the former chief executive of Hickman’s Egg Ranch, declined to comment.
Hickman’s was acquired by a joint venture between meatpacking company JBS and Brazilian egg producer Mantiqueira USA. The acquiring company said the conduct at issue predates its purchase but that the settlement resolves all allegations against Hickman’s.
The egg industry has faced price-fixing allegations before. A federal jury in 2023 ordered major U.S. egg producers to pay $17.7 million — tripled under antitrust law to more than $53 million — for conspiring to limit supply and inflate prices between 2004 and 2008.