Vermonters paid too much for eggs, officials say. Now they're getting nearly 1 million of them.

[erronis]

https://vtdigger.org/2026/06/30/vermonters-paid-too-much-for-eggs-officials-say-now-theyre-getting-nearly-1-million-of-them/
Theo Wells-Spackman

"While consumers struggled to afford rising costs of basic groceries, the largest egg producers in the country were colluding to artificially inflate prices," Vermont's attorney general said Tuesday.

Vermont will receive 915,000 eggs and $56,000 in settlement payments after an investigation indicated several large egg producers may have colluded to inflate prices between 2022 and 2025, officials said Tuesday. The eggs will go to the Vermont Foodbank.

The settlement stems from a 15-month investigation led by the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York attorney general's office into a group of American egg producers.

. . .

Lauren Jandl, Clark's chief of staff, said the financial impacts of these allegedly inflated prices on Vermonters are difficult to estimate. Egg prices soared to historic heights in 2022 and again in 2025, with industry leaders citing bird flu as a primary cost driver.



"They're looking for a villain," Cal-Maine CEO Sherman Miller told the Wall Street Journal in its coverage of the issue last year. "We don't control the power to lower egg prices."

But according to Clark, Miller's company and the other named producers had secretly communicated with each other to inflate industry pricing benchmarks. In 2022, the complaint reads, a Hickman's Egg Ranch executive emailed counterparts urging "strong bids, early and often" in the market with the result of driving up costs. Frequent instances of such behavior over the course of years are laid out as evidence in Monday's lawsuit.

. . .

[UpInArms]

1. I am so surprised

Not!

That there would be collusion and market manipulation is just unthinkable

[MadameButterfly]

2. How did this case involving the US Justice Dept. get past the Trump admistration?