SALT LAKE CITY — The state of Utah, along with the U.S. Department of Justice and more than a dozen other states, went after egg companies and reached a settlement.
In a civil antitrust lawsuit, the plaintiffs accused some of the country's largest egg producers of conspiring to manipulate benchmark egg prices and drive up the cost consumers paid for eggs nationwide.
The complaint and proposed final judgment, announced this week, were against Cal-Maine Foods Inc., Versova Holdings and Hickman's Family Farms.
The federal and state lawsuits alleged that from June 2022 to March 2025, the companies violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits agreements that restrain trade, by working together to artificially inflate the daily egg price benchmark published by Urner Barry, a market reporting service whose prices are between egg producers and grocery stores.
"Utah families were already stretched thin, and inflated egg prices stretched them further. Now our settlement changes how these companies do business and sends eggs straight to Utah food banks. That's accountability that stops powerful companies that try to cheat the market," Utah Attorney General Derek Brown said in a statement on Tuesday.
The settlement reached puts a five-year court order on the companies to prevent them from colluding again.
Per Brown's office, "The companies will collectively provide over 53 million eggs and $3.3 million in monetary recovery to the participating states. Utah consumers will receive approximately 125,000 cartons of eggs, and $93,000 will be paid to the state for antitrust enforcement."
States included in the litigation with Utah include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin.
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Emma Pitts
