When the average price of a dozen eggs in U.S. supermarkets jumped from $1.93 in January 2022 to $4.82 a year later, explanations were plentiful. Mainstream economists, agricultural experts, and columnists pointed to a devastating epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza that wiped out millions of egg-laying hens, alongside pandemic-era supply chain strains and rising feed and fuel costs. But antitrust advocates and independent watchdogs suspected human coordination was at play in a market characterized by fixed consumer demand.
Those suspicions, long dismissed by free-market analysts as populist conspiracy theories, gained traction when the U.S. Justice Department and 17 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit alleging that three of the country’s largest egg producers conspired to artificially inflate prices. Investigators concluded that firms including Mississippi-based Cal-Maine, Arizona-based Hickman’s Egg Ranch, and Iowa-based Versova coordinated inflated bids on a central exchange to manipulate price quotations and boost profits.
The alleged scheme centered on Urner Barry, a prominent market reporting service that gathers protein price data and tracks bids made by egg producers for surplus inventory on Egg Clearinghouse, Inc. These bids serve as a signal of demand and dictate large supply contracts with major retailers like Walmart, ultimately shaping the prices consumers see on grocery shelves.
Court records detail how the coordination unfolded as market pressures shifted. In mid-October 2022, after months of steady price increases driven by bird flu outbreaks, egg prices abruptly fell by 50 cents in a single week due to a temporary pullback in consumer demand. Days after the decline began, Glenn Hickman, chief executive of Hickman’s Egg Ranch, received a text message from a competitor at Cal-Maine reading, “Let’s hold it today.”
Justice Department lawyers allege that executives from the competing firms subsequently spoke by phone to orchestrate a response. Lacking the ability to quickly alter consumer demand, the companies allegedly used surplus exchange bids for purchases they never intended to complete, creating a false impression of a demand surge. Court documents show that on October 18, Hickman and Cal-Maine dominated trading on the clearinghouse, staving off the price collapse and igniting a renewed upward climb that pushed prices to $4.25 per dozen by December.
As families prepared for the holidays, representatives from Cal-Maine, Hickman’s, and Versova allegedly intensified their efforts, participating in weekly conference calls dedicated to bidding up prices. On the Monday before Christmas, executives flooded the clearinghouse with dozens of bids, eclipsing all other buyers and prompting Urner Barry to raise nationwide price quotations for white shell eggs. Throughout the week, executives urged peers to bid early and often to pull market data upward, celebrating their success in driving prices to record levels.
Angela Huffman, head of the antimonopoly group Farm Action, was among the first to question the official narrative, noting that the average size of the laying flock in 2022 never dropped by more than 6 percent compared to the previous year—a reduction too small to justify a price spike exceeding 130 percent. Huffman and antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash argued that corporate consolidation in the agricultural sector made collusion an attractive and low-risk default option for dominant firms.
The federal investigation, quietly initiated under the Biden administration and expanded under the Trump administration, culminated in June with a 29-page complaint and a proposed settlement. The agreement requires Cal-Maine, Hickman’s, and Versova to pay a combined fine of approximately $3 million, submit to an independent monitor for five years to prevent market manipulation, and supply 53 million eggs to food banks across participating states.
While the Justice Department heralded the penalties and injunctive relief as crucial safeguards against commodity market manipulation, critics condemned the outcome as an insufficient slap on the wrist for corporate executives who allegedly extracted millions of dollars from consumers. Meanwhile, economists who initially defended market fundamentals maintain that the eventual collapse of egg prices back toward historical averages reflects normal supply and demand dynamics rather than economically significant illegal behavior, leaving the underlying debate over corporate consolidation and food pricing unresolved.
