Egg prices, scrambled by alleged manipulation.
Three major US egg producers allegedly worked to artificially drive up prices for the grocery staple, helping push shoppers’ bills higher for months — and will now pay $3.3 million under a proposed settlement with the Justice Department and 17 states.
Cal-Maine Foods, Versova and Hickman’s Egg Ranch are set to pay the settlement funds and donate 53 million eggs, including 4.9 million that will go to food banks and groups serving New Yorkers, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Monday.
The bipartisan probe, led by James’ office and the DOJ and launched more than a year ago, found that the leading egg companies allegedly coordinated and “secretly communicated” to push up the daily egg price index from June 2022 through March 2025.
Prosecutors said a December 2022 email showed Hickman’s CEO urging executives at Versova and Cal-Maine to submit “strong bids, early and often” in an effort to raise the price of eggs, even as families across the country were struggling with food costs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the DOJ’s complaint alleged that executives relied on “spoofing-like tactics,” a practice in which a trader enters buy or sell orders to influence prices and then cancels them before the orders are completed.
The alleged conduct unfolded as egg supplies tightened and carton prices climbed to record levels, the outlet reported. By late 2022, prices for Midwest large eggs had surged to $5.36 a dozen during a historic bird flu outbreak, according to the report.
Egg prices kept rising through further bird flu outbreaks in 2024 and 2025, as the disease devastated the nation’s laying-hen population.
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In January 2025, restaurant owners struggled to stay afloat after the average price of a dozen eggs spiked to nearly $9 — up 70% from the year before.
A month later, New York City bodegas even started selling “loosie”-style eggs — à la notorious single cigarettes — as bird flu shortages drove prices out of control.
The proposed settlements — which will have to be approved by a federal judge — will force the three companies to end price-manipulation tactics, adopt compliance measures, and fully cooperate with state oversight, the DOJ announced on Tuesday.
The attorneys general in New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Vermont all worked to secure the settlement.
“When powerful corporations collude behind the scenes to raise prices, working families suffer the costs,” James said in a statement.
“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.”
Mississippi-based Cal-Maine Foods, the largest US egg company, said in a statement that it “denies all wrongdoing and violations of law, continues to believe that such claims are baseless and that its conduct was lawful, appropriate and in the best interest of supplying eggs to the marketplace.”
“We are pleased that this agreement enables us to move forward so we can devote our full attention to what matters most: delivering affordable, high-quality eggs and egg-based prepared foods to consumers nationwide, while helping ensure a reliable domestic supply of a nutritious, everyday staple that families depend on,” Sherman Miller, president and CEO of Cal-Maine Foods, added in a statement.
Top five Iowa-based egg producer Versova also denied wrongdoing. Hickman, a smaller company now owned by meatpacking giant JBS and Brazilian egg supplier Mantiqueira, claimed the scandal occurred before it acquired the company in late 2025, the Journal reported.
