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US egg prices are rapidly declining after a bird flu epidemic pushed them to record highs last month, prompting questions about whether producers had kept them artificially high.
Wholesale egg prices have fallen 54 per cent in the past four weeks to $3.91 per dozen on Friday, according to commodity price information service Expana.
The American Egg Board, a trade group that represents egg farmers, credited a lack of significant avian flu outbreaks in the past month and farmers’ efforts to rebuild their flocks for the plummeting prices.
Yet economists said that the precipitous drop accelerated days after US media reported that the justice department had opened an investigation into price gouging by egg producers. The high price of eggs had come to symbolise the continuing pain felt by US consumers from persistent inflation.
Advocacy groups for small farmers and consumers have long accused the country’s dominant egg producers — Cal-Maine Foods and Rose Acre Farms — of intentionally keeping prices high to increase profits.
“This suggests to me that the prices did not need to be as high as they were,” said David Anderson, a professor of economics and business at Centre College in Kentucky, “if they could be dropped seemingly so quickly and easily.”
Emily Metz, chief executive of the American Egg Board, dismissed the allegations as “conspiracy theories.” Cal-Maine Foods did not respond to a request for comment and Rose Acre Farms declined to comment.
“The egg industry is in the fight of our lives,” Metz said.
The avian flu epidemic began in 2022 but intensified in recent months, forcing farmers to cull some 30mn birds so far this year and creating an egg shortage that Metz expects to last at least until the end of the year. The price rises that followed increased scrutiny of the industry, which is heavily consolidated between a handful of companies.
“They get all they can until someone sees their hand in the cookie jar, and then they will back off real quick,” said Joe Maxwell, co-founder of advocacy group Farm Action.
Maxwell and other advocates say that the largest US egg producers are being significantly slower to rebuild their flocks than they were during the last bird flu outbreak in 2015, arguing that they may have intentionally limited egg supplies to keep prices elevated.
Cal-Maine Foods last month reported $356mn in gross quarterly profits, a fourfold increase from a year prior.
Jeremy Horpedahl, an economics professor at the University of Central Arkansas, said he was “sceptical” that farmers would be able to successfully fix prices without illegally co-ordinating with one another, of which there is no evidence.
Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins credited the Trump administration’s $1bn plan to lower prices by importing eggs and expanding relief for affected farmers among other measures.
Yet Amy Smith, vice-president at food and agriculture consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, said it was “still too soon” to see any impact from Trump’s efforts. The imported eggs were enough to “cover brunch for one day in this country”, she added.
While retailers and restaurant owners welcomed the price drop after selling eggs at a loss for months, consumers are still paying near record prices at the grocery store. A dozen grade-A large eggs cost $5.90 last month in US cities on average, a 97 per cent increase from a year earlier and the most in more than a decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Horpedahl said that while grocery store prices had fallen by as much as a dollar per dozen in some places — prices are now closer to $4 per dozen in Texas — it could be weeks before most US shoppers see relief. Current inventories were probably purchased at higher wholesale prices and retailers would want to recoup their investment, he said.
“Everyone is asking if this price decrease is for real and if it is going to last,” Anderson at Centre College said. “No one is sure what is going to happen.”
