If You Care About Record Egg Prices, You Should Care About Corporate Consolidation

The price of eggs has come to symbolize a cost of living crisis that, by many accounts, helped elect President Donald Trump. However, egg prices have a lot less to do with the recent choices of either the Biden or Trump administrations and a lot more to do with decades of policies that consolidated food production into the hands of a few powerful corporations, a trend that President Trump will likely continue.

Egg prices started rising in 2022 after a new strain of bird flu forced farmers to kill millions of egg-laying hens. However, concentrated egg production makes this outbreak and the resulting price hikes worse. First, massive, consolidated egg farms help spread disease and put more birds at risk of infection, and second, big egg corporations can abuse their market power to manipulate prices. A farmer-led advocacy group, Farm Action, urged federal antitrust enforcers last week to investigate collusive conduct between egg companies, which could be driving up egg prices. Meanwhile, local egg farmers are stepping in to fill shortages and offer cheaper eggs than large corporations, showcasing the resiliency of regional food systems.

Highly pathogenic bird flu, or H5N1, has been spreading through wild and domesticated birds in the U.S. since 2022. If just one bird in a commercial flock tests positive for bird flu, farmers must kill their entire flock to prevent disease spread. (Though the Trump administration may soon end this policy.)

Since 2022, egg farmers have killed over 120 million egg-laying hens due to bird flu. It can take five months to a year to replace an egg-laying flock and the near-term decrease in eggs drives up prices. The number of egg-laying hens in the U.S. shrunk by 8% from 2022 to 2024 and egg production overall decreased nearly 4%.

Egg prices increased more dramatically, from an average of $1.79 per dozen in 2021 to $4.15 in 2024, and things are only getting worse. Bird flu outbreaks are surging; more laying hens will be culled in the first two months of 2025 than in all of 2023. Average prices for a dozen eggs hit $4.95, and consumers in regions such as New York or California may pay as much as $9 or more. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s decisions to silence public health agencies and fire federal workers have disrupted government tracking, testing, and messaging for avian flu.

Industry consolidation makes both the risks of avian flu and egg price hikes worse. The top five egg companies own 46% of all U.S. laying hens, and the largest, Cal-Maine, has 75% more hens than its next largest competitor and controls about 20% of the market.

These companies get their eggs from fewer, larger farms. The number of egg producers in the U.S. declined from 2,500 in 1986 to just 700 in 2002. In 1982 half of all egg-laying hens lived on farms with 62,000 hens or less. By 2012, half of all hens lived on farms with 925,000 hens or more. Such consolidated egg production harms the environment as well as the animals involved. Cramming thousands of genetically similar animals indoors also creates the perfect breeding grounds for spreading and evolving zoonotic disease.

Recent H5N1 outbreaks reveal the risks of, quite literally, putting too many eggs in too few baskets. According to USDA data, there have been 196 reported outbreaks of avian flu in backyard and commercial poultry flocks in the U.S. this year, affecting nearly 29 million birds. More than 23.5 million of those birds were egg-laying hens. Nearly 18 million, or 76%, of those affected egg-laying hens lived on just 10 massive, egg farms. In other words, bird flu infections on just 10 farms could wipe out 18 million hens, or roughly 6% of all egg layers in the U.S., exacerbating a national egg price crisis.

Egg corporations face little incentive to diversify their supply chain because their profits only increase when their consolidated production systems break down. Take industry leader Cal-Maine, whose net income skyrocketed from just $18 million in 2020 to $785 million in 2023 and a respectable $278 million in 2024, due to record egg prices.

Dominant egg corporations may abuse their market power to exploit bird flu disruptions and push prices, and their profits, even higher. For instance, egg corporations could reinvest their recent hefty profits to build back bigger flocks and mitigate the egg shortage. Instead, a recent letter by Farm Action reveals that egg companies have not replaced their flocks at the same rate as they did following the 2014-2015 avian flu outbreak, suggesting that egg companies may be colluding to keep the egg supply low and prices high. The group urged the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate this and other forms of collusion and price manipulation in the egg industry.  

Farm Action’s letter to enforcers noted that egg buyers rely too heavily on just one industry price index and commodity reporting service, Urner Barry, to strike contracts that set egg prices. Urner Barry executives have been accused of having close personal ties with egg executives and aiding price-fixing conspiracies in the past.

Deconsolidating food production can lower the risk of corporate collusion, increase price competition, and improve supply chain resilience. In this latest egg price crisis, local food producers have delivered for their communities where the conventional food system has failed. From Idaho to Tennessee to Minnesota, local farmers are selling eggs for less than large egg companies, while often using more humane and sustainable practices, too.