The Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit Tuesday against five of the country’s largest egg producers, accusing them of secretly coordinating to inflate benchmark egg prices for nearly three years while American families saw grocery bills soar.
The Antitrust Division, joined by attorneys general from 17 states, filed the complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa against Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch, Centrum Valley Holdings, Versova Holdings and Versova Management Cooperative.
The complaint alleges the companies conspired from June 2022 through March 2025 to manipulate the daily price quotations published by Urner Barry Publications, a market reporting company whose egg price benchmarks are used to set wholesale prices for grocery stores, restaurants and food distributors across the country. Billions of eggs are sold each year using Urner Barry’s figures as the baseline.
“No product more quintessentially represents affordability than the price Americans pay for eggs,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. “These actions prove this Department’s continued commitment to protecting competition and providing real relief for everyday Americans’ pocketbooks.”
According to the complaint, defendants used a coordinated scheme to push Urner Barry’s quotations upward. They submitted unusually large numbers of bids on egg spot markets in the hours before Urner Barry published its daily figures, deliberately causing multiple companies to bid simultaneously to signal broad market demand. Many of those bids were structured not to result in actual trades, the complaint states. When they did execute trades, the companies did so at premium prices.
The manipulation allegedly ended abruptly in March 2025, when the companies learned of the Justice Department’s investigation and received document preservation notices. The complaint states that egg price quotations “dropped significantly from their peak” shortly after.
U.S. egg prices peaked at more than $6 per dozen Grade A large eggs in March 2025, a record driven in part by avian flu outbreaks that reduced supply. As of June 2026, prices have fallen to around $2.50 per dozen.
“Food affordability is a top priority of the Antitrust Division,” said former Acting Assistant Attorney General Omeed Assefi. “These settlements resolve years of conduct that dragged on Americans’ finances and their everyday lives.”
Under the proposed consent decrees, the five companies would be barred from coordinating with competitors on bidding strategies, prices, timing or supply-and-demand information shared with benchmark publishers. They would also be required to establish internal antitrust compliance programs, appoint compliance officers, monitor cooperative meetings and report potential violations to the Justice Department.
The attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Wisconsin joined the federal action.
The proposed settlements must be published in the Federal Register and are subject to a 60-day public comment period before the court can enter final judgment. The court must determine the settlements serve the public interest before approving them.
