The nation’s largest egg producer is raking in earnings as buyers get slammed with stratospheric costs — and it’s partly as a result of the corporate has been intentionally conserving a lid on provide, a farm advocacy group claims.
Ridgeland, Miss.-based Cal-Maine Meals has taken benefit of the avian flu disaster to “raise prices, amass record profits and consolidate market power,” Farm Motion alleged in a Tuesday letter to the Federal Commerce Fee and Division of Justice.
Whereas US egg farms have destroyed some 115 million hens over 24 months to cease the unfold of chook flu, the most important suppliers are displaying “a remarkable unwillingness” to put money into increasing their flocks, based on the letter.
That’s although the common value of a dozen grade-A eggs hit a file $4.95 final month, surpassing the earlier file of $4.82 in January 2023, based on the newest information from the Division of Labor.
In some New York Metropolis supermarkets, the worth for a dozen common eggs has hit or surpassed the $10 mark. Shops providing decrease costs, together with Dealer Joe’s and Costco, have imposed limits on what number of prospects can purchase.
Farm Motion, a bunch backed by smaller farmers to take purpose at “corporate monopolies,” claims that main egg producers are conserving the availability of latest egg-laying hens “stagnant” so as to extend their two yr run of file earnings.
Cal-Maine – the one main publicly held egg producer, with manufacturers together with Land O’ Lakes and Egg-Land’s Greatest – saved its manufacturing steady at roughly 1.1 billion dozen eggs a yr from 2021 to 2024, based on the farmer-led nonprofit’s evaluation.
Throughout that span, firm’s gross earnings had been up 237% and shot up by 646% from 2021 to 2023.
As a substitute of accelerating their flocks, the 5 firms have plowed their windfalls into gobbling up their rivals, based on the letter. Cal-Maine Meals acquired six firms in 2023 alone.
The opposite firms colluding with Cal-Maine are Rose Acre Farms, Dawn Meals, Hillandale Farms, and Versova Holdings, a spokesperson for Farm Motion instructed The Put up.
Cal-Maine didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The US egg-laying flock has but to return to its pre-epidemic dimension of round 330 million hens because the egg business has “failed to meaningfully expand the number of fertilized eggs placed in incubators and the number of chicks hatched,” based on the letter.
Chicken flocks recovered a lot faster over the last outbreak in 2015, when it took simply eight months to get again to a standard variety of birds.
In the course of the 2014-2015 chook flu, producers misplaced and changed over 35 million hens in lower than a yr, making a full restoration from the outbreak. This time round, there isn’t any restoration in sight after two years.
In 2023, Cal-Maine three different egg producers had been ordered to pay $17.7 million in damages by a federal jury to Kraft Meals, The Kellogg Firm, Common Mills and Nestle USA, who’d accused the businesses of conspiracy to restrict the egg provide within the US.
Cal-Maine controls about 20% of the egg market within the US. The corporate was accused of value fixing by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the beginning of the Avian flu in 2022.
