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Major US Egg Companies Face Class Action Over Alleged Price-Fixing

By  |  November 9, 2025

A group of major US egg producers is facing a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing them of colluding to fix prices while publicly attributing rising costs to bird flu outbreaks. The complaint, filed by supermarket chain King Kullen in an Indiana federal court, alleges that the companies manipulated market benchmarks to maintain inflated prices in violation of basic principles of “justice, equity, and good conscience,” according to a statement from the filing.

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    The lawsuit names the nation’s largest conventional egg producers and data publisher Urner Barry as defendants. Per a statement included in the complaint, the companies conspired with Urner Barry, whose published pricing benchmarks serve as a key industry reference, to “communicate, monitor and enforce” a coordinated pricing strategy. Urner Barry’s price reporting system, which relies heavily on self-reported data from dominant producers, allegedly enabled these firms to artificially raise benchmark prices.

    According to a statement in the court filing, the producers submitted inflated price data to Urner Barry to push its benchmark higher, creating an industry-wide effect on retail prices. The lawsuit contends that this manipulation contributed to a surge in egg costs, with the average price for a dozen eggs peaking at $6.23 in March, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    The complaint also challenges the producers’ explanation that avian flu outbreaks were primarily responsible for the price hikes. While the disease led to the culling of millions of hens starting in late 2021, the lawsuit argues that the scale of the outbreaks did not justify the sustained increases in consumer prices. Instead, per the plaintiffs’ statement, the bird flu was used as a convenient pretext to conceal an illegal price-fixing scheme.

    Egg prices, which spiked sharply through 2023 and 2024, have since declined. However, the class action seeks to hold producers accountable for what it characterizes as years of “artificially inflated profits” at the expense of consumers and retailers nationwide.

    Source: Supermarket News