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Breakfast foods like scrambled eggs and omelets aren’t as cheap as they used to be. You’ve probably noticed that the price of a dozen eggs has more than doubled over the last year, from $1.78 to $4.25. And that’s just the national average: Back in January, in some parts of the country, eggs cost as much as 10 bucks – if you were lucky enough to find eggs in stock at all.

The mainstream media has largely reported that this spike in egg prices was due to an avian flu outbreak in 2022 that resulted in tens of millions of chickens being slaughtered to prevent the strain from spreading further. While this supply chain issue may sound convincing, corporations are careful to leave out another less flattering explanation for sky-high egg prices: greed.

When you look at the numbers, the story about the avian flu impacting egg prices just doesn’t add up. A new report from the nonprofit Farm Action explains that at its worst point last year, the avian flu outbreak only shrank the supply of eggs by 6%. And, because lay rates were 1% to 4% higher in 2022 than the rates observed from 2017 to 2021, the industry’s quarterly egg production didn’t decline significantly this year.

In an open letter to FTC Chair Lina M. Khan, Farm Action explained, “The real culprit behind this 138 percent hike in the price of a carton of eggs appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits reaching as high as 40 percent.”

Specifically, Farm Action blames a mega-conglomerate called Cal-Maine, which is responsible for 20% of the nation’s egg production. They note that the company’s gross profits skyrocketed throughout the past year, “going from nearly $92 million in the quarter ending on February 26, 2022, to approximately $195 million in the quarter ending on May 28, 2022, to more than $217 million in the quarter ending on August 27, 2022, to just under $318 million in the quarter ending on November 26, 2022.”

Any expert will tell you that this kind of quarterly profit escalation doesn’t just happen in the course of doing business. There would have to be some huge disruption – being bought or sold, a huge lucky windfall, or some kind of chicanery – to cause that kind of extraordinary profit over the course of a year. And when one corporation gets a taste of the ballooning profits to be raked in from price-gouging, other businesses in the same industry are quick to follow.

While the price of eggs may finally be declining, price-gouging remains a pervasive issue across industries. A report from the Roosevelt Institute estimates that more than half of the price increases we saw in 2022 were caused by corporate greed – not environmental factors – which is why we’ve called the latest wave of inflation “greedflation.” Until our elected leaders step up to stop the cycle, corporations will continue to hike up the cost of necessities, and we will be forced to pay the price as consumers.

Thanks for reading, John! If you want to read more stories like this one, subscribe to The Pitch – a weekly newsletter that covers the top economic stories of the current moment.

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