Egg-flation is getting worse. The wholesale price for a dozen eggs in U.S. cities hit $4.95 last month. That is more than 50% higher than this time last year. President Donald Trump, who has already backpedaled from his campaign promise to bring down prices on Day One, promised on Friday that his new Secretary of Agriculture will “do something” about egg prices.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign of relief for the budgets of American households, not to mention restaurants and other businesses that need a steady supply of eggs. While the much-discussed avian flu has played a role, the problems go well beyond the disease. There is increasing evidence that egg prices also reflect the fallout of corporate concentration and an outbreak of “greedflation.”
Big Egg’s actions make a big difference at the supermarket, because the egg business is highly consolidated.
Americans, I am sure I don’t need to tell you, like to eat eggs. In survey after survey, we say they are our favorite breakfast food. We eat them when prices are low, and we eat them when prices are high. We like them boiled and poached, scrambled and over easy. Heck, we’ll even dine on them pickled. We each consume, on average, 281 eggs a year. That’s almost a carton of eggs every two weeks. And while high prices don’t seem to be slowing our egg habit down, we certainly notice the impact on our wallets.
The bird flu epidemic has been an issue for the egg market since 2022. When it breaks out on a chicken farm, the entire flock is quickly euthanized and the facility itself is taken out of commission for several weeks. In the United States, this means the sudden death of hundreds of thousands of egg-laying chickens, causing sudden supply chain issues — and increased prices.
But attributing the increasingly high cost of eggs entirely to avian flu looks increasingly mistaken. As Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya pointed out, the largest egg suppliers — what I like to call Big Egg — hardly appear panicked by the avian flu situation. After a 2015 outbreak of the avian flu, these companies rushed to rebuild their supply of egg-laying hens. This time, though, they have held off even as the epidemic has continued.
Big Egg’s actions make a big difference at the supermarket, because the egg business is highly consolidated. One in 5 eggs come from a single company — Cal-Maine Foods. Higher up the supply chain, just two firms provide an astonishing 90% of the birds that lay eggs for the dominant American egg suppliers. And these are not, as you can guess, small operations. The vast majority of eggs eaten in the United States are sourced from less than 400 farms.
At the same time, the gross profits of many of the largest egg suppliers are up significantly since the epidemic started. In fact, Cal-Maine’s stock price is up by more than 50% since this time last year. Analysts expect that when the company reports its results for the fiscal quarter ending Feb. 1, profits will be up by almost 100% year over year.
No wonder then, that Bedoya last week called on Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson — a Trump appointee — to open an investigation into Big Egg. “There’s a person in the government who could flick his pen and start an investigation into what the hell is going on with eggs,” Bedoya wrote. “I know there’s enough smoke that it’s worth figuring out if there’s a fire.”
It wouldn’t take much for the Trump administration to quickly cook up an investigation into whether Big Egg is once again inflating prices.
In addition to Big Egg, we might need to monitor supermarket chains, especially as prices for a dozen eggs creep toward $10.00 a carton in parts of the country. Last year, an executive for Kroger’s, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., admitted in court that the grocery giant raised the price of eggs and other staples in excess of the actual wholesale cost increase.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, even asking questions like this would have seemed like conspiracy-mongering to many people. But greedflation went from conspiracy theory to received wisdom after a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City found that up to half of inflation in 2021 could be attributed to corporate price markups.
And, let’s face it, these large companies have track records of being corporate rotten eggs. In 2023, a court found — in a case filed more than a decade ago — that the nation’s largest egg suppliers engaged in a price conspiracy scheme, working together to artificially lower the number of eggs produced in the United States and drive up prices. It wouldn’t take much for the Trump administration to quickly cook up an investigation into whether Big Egg is once again inflating prices. That might serve to bring down those prices even before any findings are announced, according to antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash. “Suddenly, everyone in the industry has an incentive to actually compete to show that they are competing,” he explained. There are longer-term solutions as well. The FTC could take action to level the playing field for smaller suppliers by prohibiting exclusionary contracts by the largest egg producers and food companies. And it could investigate — and potentially stop — further consolidation in the egg production sector. We should also look into our industrialized farm system of production. In Canada, where the average egg farm contains a mere 25,000 chickens and there is more hands-on official supply management of eggs, the industry has experienced significantly less disruption from the avian flu — and significantly less eggflation. “I’m hearing so much about eggs,” Trump said last Friday, admitting that his administration has to “figure out something fast.” Whatever their recipe, this White House needs to get cracking.
Helaine Olen
Helaine R. Olen is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. She is managing editor of the American Economic Liberties Project. 
