The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Three major egg producers colluded to inflate prices during the avian flu crisis, netting billions.
The DOJ and 18 states settled with Cal-Maine, Versova, and Hickman's Egg Ranch for manipulating Urner Barry's egg price index from 2022-2025. Evidence includes CEO emails coordinating fake bids to drive up the benchmark price. The scheme exploited the avian flu crisis as cover. Cal-Maine made over $1 billion in 2023 and $1.8 billion in 2024. The settlement requires $3 million in penalties and 53 million donated eggs, with no admission of wrongdoing. The article notes this is a 1,000-to-1 return on the scheme, effectively rewarding the crime. The conspiracy ended only after the DOJ investigation became known.
Economists and industry analysts had dismissed price-gouging claims, blaming supply and demand. The article frames this as a validation of greedflation theory and a critique of the feckless settlement.
What commenters are saying
Commenters are furious at the settlement's leniency, calling it a 'parking ticket' for a billion-dollar crime. The dominant sentiment is that the penalty is a rounding error, providing no deterrent. Several point to market concentration as the root cause: a small number of players made collusion easy. A commenter counters that the market structure itself was flawed, noting the small egg exchange benchmarked the entire industry. Others blame the legal system for being pro-corporate. One thread notes both parties' administrations are seen as corrupt on antitrust. Another highlights the irony of industry CEOs mocking the 'slopulism' theory of price-fixing, now proven. A few call for criminal charges rather than no-admit settlements.