Bipartisan pair of senators applaud DOJ investigation into egg producers

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: ABC News

May 9, 2025, 5:06 AM


A bipartisan pair of senators applauded the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into major egg producers over rising prices and called on the department to look even further into the issue in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater late Thursday evening.

"We write to express support for the Department of Justice's reported investigation into anticompetitive practices in the U.S. egg industry," Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Jim Banks wrote. "As you are aware, the sustained increase in egg prices has placed a significant financial strain on American families, particularly workingclass households. 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."

ABC News reported in March that the Department of Justice was in the early stages of investigating major egg producers over soaring egg prices. Sources told ABC News at the time that department investigators were looking into whether the major egg companies were sharing information about supply and pricing, possibly contributing to price increases.

The average retail price of a dozen eggs climbed from $4.95 in January to $6.22 in March, the most recent month for which data is available, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That amounts to a 25% increase in consumer cost.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bipartisan-pair-senators-applaud-doj-investigation-egg-producers/story?id=121614814

[Shipwack]

1. Should have been done way sooner.

Slate recently had an article that questioned high egg prices.

https://slate.com/business/2025/04/egg-prices-justice-department-investigation.html

You are probably familiar with the story going around about the egg shortage: The United States is in the midst of an outbreak of the highly contagious avian flu. Millions of hens across the country have been wiped out, greatly curtailing the number of eggs in the supply chain. That’s what led to the $12 cartons, totally barren egg sections at the grocery store, surcharges applied to the omelets at Waffle House, and—if we’re being honest—the reelection of Donald Trump under a storm of consumer outrage.

That all makes sense on one level, but Angela Huffman, head of Farm Action—a nonprofit that campaigns against the corporatization of the food system—believes there’s something fishier going on. Maybe, she said, the avian flu is an easy scapegoat for what’s really happening. Maybe the nation’s largest egg producers are using this opportunity to turn a fortune off of breakfast. So Huffman, and her organization, started investigating.

“We had noticed that egg prices had gone up, but at the same time, the largest producers had their profits going up drastically,” Huffman told me. “We thought, OK, if they just needed to raise prices to account for the losses of their hens due to the flu, why are they making five times more money?’ That was really odd to us.”

According to Farm Action’s research, there is evidence that the avian flu’s impact on egg production hasn’t been quite as pervasive as consumers might think. Despite the wipeout infestations and mass euthanizing, Farm Action alleges the size of egg-laying flocks in 2025 are, on average, only about 5 percent smaller, on a month-to-month basis, than they were in 2021.
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[sueh]

2. While they're at it, they should investigate price gouging on groceries in general.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. When Democrats were in control

they HAD been investigating the price gouging - and not just in grocery stores but across the entire retail spectrum (including gas prices) - and that included the whole "junk fees" thing that Biden had E.O.s for and that 45 completely reversed.

Some of the hearings were even posted on DU and got yawns.