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I did not realize the egg crisis was found to be price fixing operation. As I recall during the whole thing the news was non-stop about how it was related to b

I did not realize the egg crisis was found to be price fixing operation. As I recall during the whole thing the news was non-stop about how it was related to broad-based inflation, chicken culling for avian flu, etc. Seems like all that was a lie, or at least merely a half-truth.

pixl97 3mo ago
Never let a good crisis go to waste, or so the saying goes. The consolidation of food production in the US is a risk to us all.
- snootypoot 3mo ago
  have you ever seen the documentary food inc?
  - fragmede 3mo ago
    This one? https://www.philo.com/player/player/vod/Vk9EOjYwODU0ODg5OTY0ODc5MDAwNA https://www.philo.com/player/player/vod/Vk9EOjYwODU0ODg5OTY0...
kevmo 3mo ago
[flagged]
- cjbgkagh 3mo ago
  I call it 3 scams in a trench coat pretending to be a real economy. Though obviously there are more than 3 going. You kinda have to be in one of the grifts in order to pay the costs of the others, like work in military contracting in order to pay for healthcare. That’s why crackdowns on fraud, collusion, and other such grifts, rackets, and anticompetitive actions in the US is doomed to fail, those who benefit from it tend to be the most reliable political donors. It’s hard to go after one and not go after the others and that would upset a lot of politically powerful people, this results in an armistice and not going after any.
  - snootypoot 3mo ago
    of course it helps that all of these politically powerful and reliable donors are also epstein class untouchables.
JKCalhoun 3mo ago
It was 100% due to Biden. (Or so I was told. Might even be the reason we have Trump 2.0?)
- throwway120385 3mo ago
  The major egg supplier for most of the grocery stores decided not to buy as many pullets to replace the ones they culled from Avian Flu, and then the second and third largest also followed suit. As a result there was a bug supply crunch that coincided with Avian Flu cullings. Unless Biden was there making command decisions about how many pullets to buy that year he had nothing to do with it.
  - JKCalhoun 3mo ago
    Not disagreeing, but all I heard was Biden-flation (or whatever they called it) was why we needed a new President.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - JohnMakin 3mo ago
      It could have been investigated. Even this article states prices went down as a likely result of the investigation. Turning a blind eye bears some culpability. All we heard during those years was that it was due to avian flu shortage, and if you mentioned otherwise, you got shouted down by politically connected people.
      - tchalla 3mo ago
        > It could have been investigated. The investigation started during Biden’s term as president.
        JohnMakin 3mo ago
        Not sure where you’re getting this information, it began early 2025: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/doj-investigation-egg-price-fixing-bird-flu-00218785 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/doj-investigation-e...
pests 3mo ago
Back then I had done the math on how long it takes to turn around a commercial chicken coop after a complete full. The timeline from egg to fully producing hen was quicker than I thought, and it seemed they should have been able to keep up the replacement rates.
- conorcleary 3mo ago
  Factor in the labour and who's doing it (or not)
Aurornis 3mo ago
The avian flu pandemic started in early 2022. I looked up old news articles and a lot of them are dated February 2022. It really did increase egg prices. The collusion quotes in this article start in October 2022, though it doesn't say exactly when the collusion started. As far as I can tell, avian flu did create a supply shock, which did raise prices. When the avian flu problem started going away, the egg companies started colluding to try to keep the egg prices high.
- autoexec 3mo ago
  According to one lawsuit, Cal-Maine wasn't impacted at all by the avian flu, they just jacked prices up 270% anyway while using the avian flu as an excuse. > Meanwhile, in context and during the class period, egg producers like Cal-Maine increased egg prices by as much as 270% in 2023 despite having zero Avian Flu outbreaks in their egg laying hen layers on Cal-Maine affiliated farms (https://www.classaction.org/news/antitrust-lawsuit-says-producers-used-shared-platform-to-conspire-to-fix-egg-prices-using-avian-flu-as-pretext https://www.classaction.org/news/antitrust-lawsuit-says-prod...)
  - decimalenough 3mo ago
    On its face, this is a normal market response: if demand is unchanged and overall supply goes down, prices go up. The criminal conspiracy part here was manipulating the index prices in tandem so that everybody raised prices in lockstep.
    - autoexec 3mo ago
      > if demand is unchanged and overall supply goes down, prices go up. How much did supply go down considering that Cal-Maine Foods, Inc is (or at least was) the single largest supplier of eggs in the country? Ultimately their profits increased 718% (https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/business/egg-profits-cal-maine/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/business/egg-profits-cal-main...) which seems unlikely to be explained away by reduced supply. They were price gouging and fixing prices with the other large suppliers to prevent consumers from just switching to those brands while small egg producers may have had issues with avian flu keeping their fairly priced products off the shelves.
thephyber 3mo ago
Those contributed. But also, the news isn’t privy to an actual price fixing conspiracy while it’s happening. To the extent that a news org reports on it, it’s because someone within the system grows some ethics (very hard to burn a bridge when it means no more revenue in the industry). It took even the regulators years to build a case for it. People have long complained about the consolidation of the chicken production chain in the US. Only 2-3 major companies control most of the supply via contracts. The farms are required to follow the terms of the contract closely when raising chickens or risk getting locked out of the major distributors. Post-consolidation, the industry is ripe for abuse. The combination of very strong contract enforcement and weak regulatory enforcement means the industry is effectively rent-seeking by design. This much was known, but without subpoena power, actual price fixing is just a suspicion.
gnabgib 3mo ago
By the DOJ? Yes - although it's a settlement (5 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734081
ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
The key factor that nearly everyone misses or perhaps, deliberately ignores, is that chicken eggs are worth their weight in gold to pharmaceutical manufacturers. There's a significant number of pathogens, er I mean, vaccines, that are tested and/or cultured only inside of eggs, and for the seasonal flu vaccines, those pathogen factories are unfathomably gigantic in scale. So essentially, any drain on the supply of chicken eggs for the consumer market may be attributed to the overwhelming and ever-increasing demand from the pharmaceutical industry to use up these eggs so that they can grow viruses, bacteria, and other nasties to, er, checks notes inoculate the population and keep the world safe for democracy. That's the ticket.
ekjhgkejhgk 3mo ago
Please check out the investigation in 3 parts (linked from OP's link) where they explain all of it. Fascinating reading in my opinion. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/hatching-a-conspiracy-a-big-investigation https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/hatching-a-conspiracy-a-b...

pixl97 3mo ago

Never let a good crisis go to waste, or so the saying goes. The consolidation of food production in the US is a risk to us all.

snootypoot 3mo ago
have you ever seen the documentary food inc?
- fragmede 3mo ago
  This one? https://www.philo.com/player/player/vod/Vk9EOjYwODU0ODg5OTY0ODc5MDAwNA https://www.philo.com/player/player/vod/Vk9EOjYwODU0ODg5OTY0...

kevmo 3mo ago

[flagged]

cjbgkagh 3mo ago
I call it 3 scams in a trench coat pretending to be a real economy. Though obviously there are more than 3 going. You kinda have to be in one of the grifts in order to pay the costs of the others, like work in military contracting in order to pay for healthcare. That’s why crackdowns on fraud, collusion, and other such grifts, rackets, and anticompetitive actions in the US is doomed to fail, those who benefit from it tend to be the most reliable political donors. It’s hard to go after one and not go after the others and that would upset a lot of politically powerful people, this results in an armistice and not going after any.
- snootypoot 3mo ago
  of course it helps that all of these politically powerful and reliable donors are also epstein class untouchables.

JKCalhoun 3mo ago

It was 100% due to Biden. (Or so I was told. Might even be the reason we have Trump 2.0?)

throwway120385 3mo ago
The major egg supplier for most of the grocery stores decided not to buy as many pullets to replace the ones they culled from Avian Flu, and then the second and third largest also followed suit. As a result there was a bug supply crunch that coincided with Avian Flu cullings. Unless Biden was there making command decisions about how many pullets to buy that year he had nothing to do with it.
- JKCalhoun 3mo ago
  Not disagreeing, but all I heard was Biden-flation (or whatever they called it) was why we needed a new President.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - JohnMakin 3mo ago
    It could have been investigated. Even this article states prices went down as a likely result of the investigation. Turning a blind eye bears some culpability. All we heard during those years was that it was due to avian flu shortage, and if you mentioned otherwise, you got shouted down by politically connected people.
    - tchalla 3mo ago
      > It could have been investigated. The investigation started during Biden’s term as president.
      - JohnMakin 3mo ago
        Not sure where you’re getting this information, it began early 2025: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/doj-investigation-egg-price-fixing-bird-flu-00218785 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/doj-investigation-e...

pests 3mo ago

Back then I had done the math on how long it takes to turn around a commercial chicken coop after a complete full. The timeline from egg to fully producing hen was quicker than I thought, and it seemed they should have been able to keep up the replacement rates.

conorcleary 3mo ago
Factor in the labour and who's doing it (or not)

Aurornis 3mo ago

The avian flu pandemic started in early 2022. I looked up old news articles and a lot of them are dated February 2022. It really did increase egg prices. The collusion quotes in this article start in October 2022, though it doesn't say exactly when the collusion started. As far as I can tell, avian flu did create a supply shock, which did raise prices. When the avian flu problem started going away, the egg companies started colluding to try to keep the egg prices high.

autoexec 3mo ago
According to one lawsuit, Cal-Maine wasn't impacted at all by the avian flu, they just jacked prices up 270% anyway while using the avian flu as an excuse. > Meanwhile, in context and during the class period, egg producers like Cal-Maine increased egg prices by as much as 270% in 2023 despite having zero Avian Flu outbreaks in their egg laying hen layers on Cal-Maine affiliated farms (https://www.classaction.org/news/antitrust-lawsuit-says-producers-used-shared-platform-to-conspire-to-fix-egg-prices-using-avian-flu-as-pretext https://www.classaction.org/news/antitrust-lawsuit-says-prod...)
- decimalenough 3mo ago
  On its face, this is a normal market response: if demand is unchanged and overall supply goes down, prices go up. The criminal conspiracy part here was manipulating the index prices in tandem so that everybody raised prices in lockstep.
  - autoexec 3mo ago
    > if demand is unchanged and overall supply goes down, prices go up. How much did supply go down considering that Cal-Maine Foods, Inc is (or at least was) the single largest supplier of eggs in the country? Ultimately their profits increased 718% (https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/business/egg-profits-cal-maine/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/business/egg-profits-cal-main...) which seems unlikely to be explained away by reduced supply. They were price gouging and fixing prices with the other large suppliers to prevent consumers from just switching to those brands while small egg producers may have had issues with avian flu keeping their fairly priced products off the shelves.

thephyber 3mo ago

Those contributed. But also, the news isn’t privy to an actual price fixing conspiracy while it’s happening. To the extent that a news org reports on it, it’s because someone within the system grows some ethics (very hard to burn a bridge when it means no more revenue in the industry). It took even the regulators years to build a case for it. People have long complained about the consolidation of the chicken production chain in the US. Only 2-3 major companies control most of the supply via contracts. The farms are required to follow the terms of the contract closely when raising chickens or risk getting locked out of the major distributors. Post-consolidation, the industry is ripe for abuse. The combination of very strong contract enforcement and weak regulatory enforcement means the industry is effectively rent-seeking by design. This much was known, but without subpoena power, actual price fixing is just a suspicion.

gnabgib 3mo ago

By the DOJ? Yes - although it's a settlement (5 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734081

ButlerianJihad 3mo ago

The key factor that nearly everyone misses or perhaps, deliberately ignores, is that chicken eggs are worth their weight in gold to pharmaceutical manufacturers. There's a significant number of pathogens, er I mean, vaccines, that are tested and/or cultured only inside of eggs, and for the seasonal flu vaccines, those pathogen factories are unfathomably gigantic in scale. So essentially, any drain on the supply of chicken eggs for the consumer market may be attributed to the overwhelming and ever-increasing demand from the pharmaceutical industry to use up these eggs so that they can grow viruses, bacteria, and other nasties to, er, checks notes inoculate the population and keep the world safe for democracy. That's the ticket.

ekjhgkejhgk 3mo ago

Please check out the investigation in 3 parts (linked from OP's link) where they explain all of it. Fascinating reading in my opinion. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/hatching-a-conspiracy-a-big-investigation https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/hatching-a-conspiracy-a-b...