SALT LAKE CITY – Market experts and state officials say inflation wasn’t to blame when a dozen eggs were averaging more than $5 in Utah grocery stores in the early years of this decade.
That spike in egg prices was the result of an illegal price-fixing scheme by a consortium of egg producers, according to Attorney General Derek Brown.
“Utah families were already stretch thin,” Brown recalls, “and inflated egg prices stretched them even further.”
Under a settlement with three major egg producers announced in late June by the U.S. Department of Justice, the companies will provide more than 53 million eggs to non-profit organizations in 17 states along with $3.3 million in monetary compensation.
Following an investigation into that price-fixing scheme, egg producers Cal-Maine Foods, Versova Holdings and Hickman’s Family Farms agreed to the terms of a settlement outlined by Brown and 16 other state attorneys general without admitting any wrong-doing.
“Our settlement changes how these companies do business and sends eggs straight to Utah food banks,” Brown explains. “That’s accountability that stops powerful companies that try to cheat the market.”
The DOJ complaint alleges that the companies colluded to raise prices by sharing competitively sensitive pricing information and submitting coordinated bids to Urner Barry, a market price index.
The complaint alleges that from 2022 to 2025, several of the defendants operated “net short”—producing fewer eggs than their retail contracts required — and purchasing the shortfall from the Egg Clearinghouse Inc., an American online marketplace for surplus eggs. The resulting higher bids obliged Urner Barry to raise benchmarks that determined pricing under those contracts.
The advocacy group Food & Wine tracked egg prices and the factors behind those wild swings for several years, noting that the national average price for eggs at its peak was roughly $7 per dozen in 2023.
During the early years of the egg price hikes, producers attributed those spikes to inflation, an outbreak of severe bird flu and the implementation of cage-free mandates in California, Colorado and Michigan.
A preliminary anti-trust investigation launched in March of 2025 said differently, however, finding that the aforementioned egg producers engaged in conduct intended to fix prices, a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
Under the settlement, Brown says that Utah consumers will receive approximately 125,000 cartons of free eggs and the state will receive nearly $100,000 for anti-trust enforcement.
Market observers have criticized that settlement as too lenient, suggesting that the egg producers racked up combined windfall profits in the early part of this decade estimated at nearly $3 billion.