Egg Producers to Pay $3.3 Million to Settle Federal Price-Fixing Lawsuit

A group of major egg producers accused of price fixing for nearly three years will pay $3.3 million as part of a proposed settlement of an antitrust lawsuit brought against them by the federal government and 17 states, according to court documents.The companies also agreed to donate more than 53 million eggs to food banks and nonprofit groups in the plaintiff states under the terms of the settlement, which was announced this week and is subject to court approval.The defendants named in the lawsuit, which did not acknowledge any wrongdoing, were Cal-Maine Foods Inc.of Ridgeland, Miss., Hickman’s Egg Ranch Inc.

of Buckeye, Ariz., and Versova of Sioux Center, Iowa.The proposed settlement in the U.S.District Court for the Northern District of Iowa will require the companies to cooperate with federal monitoring and to adopt compliance programs to prevent them from manipulating prices, the Justice Department said.The federal government began its investigation as the average wholesale price of a dozen eggs in the United States reached a record high of about $6.23 in March 2025, exacerbated by an avian flu outbreak and elevated fuel, feed and packaging costs.“No product more quintessentially represents affordability than the price Americans pay for eggs,” Stanley E.

Woodward Jr., the associate attorney general, said in a statement on Tuesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....