Corporations partly to blame for high egg prices: Report

(NewsNation) — Egg shortages and precocious prices person mostly been blamed connected an outbreak of vertebrate flu, but a caller watchdog report says companies are creating the situation by terms gouging their customers.

According to information from the United States Department of Agriculture, the terms of eggs has nearly doubled successful the past six weeks, with the mean outgo of a twelve astatine astir $8.

Bird flu, which has dispersed poultry and besides affected dairy herds, has "slightly reduced" ovum production, but "corporate greed has besides played a large role," a study from Food and Water Watch published Wednesday said.

According to the report, astir 10 companies power the immense bulk of the eggs produced successful America, and they dictate ovum prices whether there's a vertebrate flu outbreak oregon not.

One of these companies, the Mississippi-based Cal-Maine Foods, accrued their profits by 7.5 times implicit the archetypal twelvemonth of the vertebrate flu outbreak — contempt not having outbreaks successful their ain flocks that fiscal year, Food and Water Watch found. During that fiscal year, from June 2022 done May 2023, Cal-Maine really sold 7% much eggs compared to FY2021.

The study says Cal-Maine Foods "commanded prices from its buyers that were overmuch higher than needed to screen rising costs, astatine a clip erstwhile nationalist ovum prices were skyrocketing."

"Basically, they conscionable raised their prices and locked up with nationalist prices. They had nary crushed to," Amanda Starbuck, probe manager for Food and Water Watch, said.

In FY2021, Cal-Maine took successful $0.15 per twelve eggs produced and sold, according to the report. It past made $1.14 per twelve eggs successful FY2023, and sold implicit 1 cardinal eggs.

"That's $1 cardinal dollars successful windfall profits that they made from the consumers having to wage much for eggs," Starbuck said.

Cal-Maine did not respond to the Associated Press' petition for comment.

American Egg Board President Emily Metz said prices person thing to bash with thing different than vertebrate flu.

“I deliberation to suggest thing other is simply a misreading of the facts and the reality,” American Egg Board President Emily Metz said. “Our farmers are successful the combat of their lives, period, afloat stop. And they’re doing everything they tin to support these birds safe.. .This is simply a proviso situation owed to vertebrate flu. Nothing else.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins pushed backmost against disapproval that the higher outgo of eggs was solely the effect of avian flu erstwhile she unveiled a nearly $1 cardinal program to combat the existent terms spike.

Instead, she attributed the existent concern to “the precocious outgo of inputs, the unbelievable magnitude of regulation, the shutting down of our export markets.”

Rollins' program includes $500 cardinal for biosecurity measures to “lock the barns down” and initiatives to repopulate flocks aft what she described arsenic the depopulation of astir 160 cardinal birds nether the Biden administration.

NewsNation integer shaper Damita Menezes and The Associated Press contributed to this report.