Federal lawsuits mount against top egg producers, who say avian flu outbreaks are behind price surge

As the U.S. Department of Justice investigates possible price-fixing in the egg industry, lawsuits are piling up against Seymour-based Rose Acre Farms Inc. and the nation’s other top egg producers in federal courts across the Midwest.

In the U.S. District Court of Southern Indiana alone, consumers, egg processors and retailers have filed six lawsuits since November against Rose Acre and the four other top egg producers.

The complaints allege that the producers manipulated the market to raise prices to a record high average of $6.23 a dozen for Grade A Large eggs in March 2025.

The industry maintains that prices spiked because of avian flu outbreaks over the past five years.

“There is no other reason,” Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, said in a written statement to The Indiana Lawyer. “To suggest otherwise is to ignore publicly available egg price and flock size data.”

The egg board is the national marketing organization for American egg farmers. It is not a party to the lawsuits, which allege that egg producers merely used the avian flu as a pretext to justify high prices.

The lawsuits accuse the nation’s “Big Five” egg producers of price gouging. While the plaintiffs acknowledge that the bird flu killed millions of hens, they argue that the supply did not drop enough to justify the price increases.

The lawsuits note that prices only started to come down after the DOJ investigation was first reported by several news outlets in March 2025. By January of this year, the average price of a dozen Grade A Large eggs was $2.52, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Amanda Gee, spokeswoman for Rose Acre, said the company’s leadership had no information to share on the lawsuits at this time. Rose Acre is the nation’s second-largest egg producer behind Cal-Maine.

Lawyers and communication professionals for Cal-Maine and the three other top egg producers did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The lawsuits

Indianapolis-based CohenMalad is among a group of law firms that has filed two lawsuits against the nation’s top five egg producers in federal court in Indianapolis. The four other lawsuits filed in Indianapolis cite the same defendant egg producers.

In addition to Rose Acre, the egg producers named as defendants are Mississippi-based Cal-Maine Foods Inc., Wisconsin-based Daybreak Foods Inc., Iowa-based Versova Holdings and Pennsylvania-based Hillandale Farms.

In February, the two CohenMalad lawsuits and similar ones filed in Illinois were transferred to Wisconsin’s Western District, where Daybreak Foods is headquartered and two other complaints alleging egg price-fixing are pending.

All of the suits seek class-action status. Other “tag-along” lawsuits in Indiana and elsewhere also could be sent to Western Wisconsin Chief Judge James D. Peterson’s court.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered the consolidation, determining that the move would “eliminate duplicative discovery; prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings, especially with respect to class certification; and conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel, and the judiciary.”

Irwin Levin, managing partner at CohenMalad, declined to comment on the firm’s two egg lawsuits. They were filed on behalf of King Kullen Grocery Co. Inc., a regional supermarket chain on Long Island, New York, and Taylor Egg Products, a New Hampshire-based egg processor.

The allegations

The King Kullen complaint notes that the egg industry is highly consolidated, with the five largest producers controlling nearly half of all laying hens in the United States. All are part of a benchmark pricing system that the plaintiffs believe can be manipulated.

According to the complaint, most egg contracts in the United States are tied to daily wholesale price quotations published by Urner Barry, which serves as a de facto national pricing benchmark.

More than 95% of eggs are sold under contracts pegged to Urner Barry’s reported prices, according to the lawsuit. Urner Barry compiles its price reports by collecting transaction data, bids and “assessments” from producers, brokers and buyers, including the defendant egg companies.

The lawsuit alleges that producers reported inflated pricing information to Urner Barry, which then published higher benchmark prices that were automatically incorporated into contracts across the industry.

Because contracts reference those benchmarks, even modest upward changes in reported prices immediately translated into higher costs for buyers, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint describes what it calls a “self-reinforcing feedback loop.” Once higher prices were reported and adopted as the benchmark, those elevated prices became the baseline for subsequent reporting, making it difficult for prices to fall.

In addition, the lawsuit alleges that producers influenced pricing on the Egg Clearinghouse, a private online spot market that accounts for less than 5% of egg transactions but plays an outsized role because its trades are incorporated into Urner Barry’s pricing.

The complaint claims that because the market is small and dominated by large producers, coordinated trades there could move the benchmark price nationwide.

Flu effect

Egg producers have publicly attributed higher egg prices to outbreaks of a highly pathogenic avian influenza beginning in late 2021.

Metz, the egg board CEO, said more than 150 million hens have been lost to bird flu over the past five years, including 45 million hens in 2025 alone.

“More than 54 million egg-laying hens were lost in a matter of months between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025, exceeding totals for all prior years of hen losses from bird flu,” Metz added. “The velocity and scale of those losses during the peak demand holiday season last year put tremendous systemic strain on egg production nationally and, consequently, the egg supply, which drove wholesale prices for shell eggs to historic highs in that period.”

She said recovery from such substantial losses take time.

“It will take a sustained period with no additional [flu] detections on egg farms to stabilize and normalize America’s egg supply,” Metz said. “No one wants that more than America’s egg farmers, because bird flu is absolutely devastating.”

The King Kullen lawsuit alleges that the magnitude of flock losses was far less than what would justify the price increases.

The complaint cites analysis indicating that wholesale prices rose 127% in 2022 despite only about a 1% effective reduction in the national hen flock compared to 2021. It also says that price increases per unit of supply loss were three to four times greater than during the 2015 avian flu outbreak.

DOJ investigation

The lawsuits started to mount in November after it was reported by several news outlets in March 2025 that the DOJ was investigating possible price-fixing on eggs.

The investigation came to light after letters expressing concern about egg prices were sent to the Trump administration.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts led a group of Democratic lawmakers in writing to Trump about fears that egg producers could use the bird flu to pump up profits.

Farm Action, which opposes food monopolies, also expressed antitrust concerns to the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission.

“While avian flu has been cited as the primary driver of skyrocketing egg prices, its actual impact on production has been minimal,” the group wrote.

After the investigation was underway, U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, joined the chorus.

He and Warren sent a joint letter to the Department of Justice in May 2025 expressing support for the probe.

“The sustained increase in egg prices has placed a significant financial strain on American families, particularly working-class households,” the senators wrote. “While egg producers and trade associations point to recent avian flu outbreaks as the cause of high prices, we are concerned that record high egg prices reflect noncompetitive behavior among large producers.”

They noted that Cal-Maine’s gross profits of $247 million, $356 million and a record $716 million during the first three quarters of fiscal year 2025 each far outstripped the $161 million the company made during the entire fiscal year of 2021.

Other critics note this is not the first time the egg industry has been accused of price-fixing.

A federal jury in 2023 ordered major U.S. egg producers to pay $17.7 million (tripled under antitrust law to more than $53 million) for conspiring to limit supply and inflate prices between 2004 and 2008.

What’s next?

Attorneys involved in the current civil lawsuits on egg prices are filing motions, preparing to argue about class certification and probably settling in for the long haul.

Unless the lawsuits are dismissed, this preliminary court phase can take many months or even more than a year before any meaningful trial dates emerge.

Final resolutions in such complex multidistrict antitrust cases are often years down the road.

The six price-fixing lawsuits initially filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Indiana are: King Kullen Grocery Co., Inc. v. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., et al., 1:25-cv-02274; Nineteenseventynine d/b/a The Breakfast Joynt v. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., et al., 1:25-cv-02301; Taylor Egg Products, Inc. v. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., et al., 1:25-cv-02554; Hudson et al. v. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., et al., 1:25-cv-02573; Huyler v. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., et al., 1:26-cv-00135; and Emery et al. v. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., et al., No. 1:26-cv-00193.•