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food system
The Real Reason for Soaring Egg Prices? Gouging by the 'Rotten Egg Oligarchy'
A new Food & Water Watch report details how "corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
Mar 04, 2025
The nation's largest egg producers would have American consumers believe that avian flu and inflation are behind soaring prices, but a report published Tuesday shows corporate price gouging is the real culprit driving the record cost of the dietary staple.
The fourth installment of Food & Water Watch's (FWW) Economic Cost of Food Monopolies series—titled The Rotten Egg Oligarchy—reports that the average price of a dozen eggs in the United States hit an all-time high of $4.95 in January 2025. That's more than two-and-a-half times the average price from three years ago.
"While egg prices spiral out of reach, making eggs a luxury item, Big Ag is profiting hand over fist," FWW research director Amanda Starbuck said in a statement. "But make no mistake—today's high prices are built on a foundation of corporate price gouging. Our research shows how corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
FWW found that "egg prices were already rising before the current [avian flu] outbreak hit U.S. commercial poultry flocks in February 2022, and have never returned to pre-outbreak levels."
Furthermore, "egg price spikes hit regions that were bird flu-free until recently," the report states. "The U.S. Southeast remained free of bird flu in its table egg flocks until January 2025, and actually increased egg production in 2022 and 2023 over 2021 levels. Nevertheless, retail egg prices in the Southeast rose alongside January 2023's national price spikes."
"The corporate food system is to blame for exacerbating the scale of the outbreak as well as the high cost of eggs," the publication continues. "Factory farms are virus incubators, with the movement of animals, machines, and workers between operations helping to spread the virus."
"Meanwhile, just a handful of companies produce the majority of our eggs, giving them outsized control over the prices paid by retailers, who often pass on rising costs to consumers," the paper adds. "This highly consolidated food system also enables companies to leverage a temporary shortage in one region to raise prices across the entire country."
Cal-Maine, the nation's top egg producer, enjoyed a more than 600% increase in gross profits between fiscal years 2021-23, according to FWW. The Mississippi-based company did not suffer any avian flu outbreaks in fiscal year 2023, during which it sold more eggs than during the previous two years. Yet it still sold conventional eggs at nearly three times the price as in 2021, amounting to over $1 billion in windfall profits. Meanwhile Cal-Maine paid shareholders dividends totaling $250 million in 2023, 40 times more during the previous fiscal year.
The report highlights how factory farming creates ideal conditions for the spread of avian flu, a single case of which requires the extermination of the entire flock at the affected facility, under federal regulations.
"These impacts cannot be understated," FWW stressed. "Today's average factory egg farm confines over 800,000 birds, with some operations confining several million. This magnifies the scale of animal suffering and death, as well as the enormous environmental and safety burden of disposing of a million or more infected bird carcasses."
Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures, The Guardianreported Tuesday that more than 54 million birds have been affected in the past three months alone.
Egg producers know precisely how the supply-and-demand implications of these outbreaks and subsequent culls can boost their bottom lines. Meanwhile, they play a dangerous game as epidemiologists widely view a potential avian flu mutation that can be transmitted from birds to humans as the next major pandemic threat—one that's exacerbated by the Trump administration's withdrawal from the World Health Organization and cuts to federal agencies focused on averting the next pandemic.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else."
So far, 70 avian flu cases—one of them fatal—have been reported in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, under Trump, the CDC has stopped publishing regular reports on its avian flu response plans and activities. The USDA, meanwhile, said it "accidentally" terminated staffers working on avian flu response during the firing flurry under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The agency is scrambling to reverse the move.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else," the FWW report argues. "Nor can we allow the factory farm system to continue polluting our environment and serving as the breeding ground for the next human pandemic."
"We need to enforce our nation's antitrust laws to go after corporate price fixing and collusion," the publication adds. "We also need a national ban on new and expanding factory farms, while transitioning to smaller, regional food systems that are more resilient to disruptions."
That is highly unlikely under Trump, whose policies—from taxation to regulation and beyond—have overwhelmingly favored the ultrawealthy and corporations over working Americans. Meanwhile, one of the president's signature campaign promises, to lower food prices "on day one," has evaporated amid ever-rising consumer costs.
According to the USDA's latest Food Price Outlook, overall food prices are projected to rise 3.4% in 2025. Eggs, however, are forecast to soar a staggering 41.1% this year—and possibly by as much as 74.9%.
"If President Trump has any interest in fulfilling his campaign pledge to lower food prices," Starbuck stressed, "he must begin by taking on the food monopolies exploiting pandemic threat for profit."
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The Ultraprocessed Foods Corporations Cram Down Our Children's Throats
UPFs make up two-thirds of the calories consumed by children and teenagers in the United States.
May 13, 2024
About forty-five years ago, at a social gathering, I asked an executive of a Minneapolis-based large food processing company if he fed heavily sugared cereals to his children. He smiled as he shook his head. Smart person. His and other major companies producing what is now called Ultraprocessed Foods (UPFs) had scientists and labs. They knew that ever higher doses of sugars, fats, and salts were being poured into nutritionally stripped foods and deceptively promoted to youngsters on kiddy television. They profitably ignored the serious damage they were causing!
These companies’ marketeers succeeded in getting these children, as my mother would say, to turn their tongues against their brains. The children were also shown how to nag their parents into buying junk food and drink. In fact, Madison Avenue advertising firms would give high ratings for ads “with a high nag factor.”
It was about 1980 when obesity rates started rising at alarming rates. Now about 30% of adults are obese, another 35% are overweight. Recently, a Goldman Sachs study estimated that by 2028 up to 70 million Americans will be taking the new weight-loss drugs, whose longer-term effects are yet to be known. Their apparent present success in suppressing extra food intake is already worrying the fast-food chains like McDonald’s that thrive on selling huge cheeseburgers.
It was also about 1980 when the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) staff and its leader, Dr. Michael Jacobson, were appearing in the mass media and on major national talk shows. They graphically showed the public the large amounts of fat, sugar, and salt that were in the hot dogs, potato chips, and soft drinks they consumed. Millions of Americans started changing their food purchases toward multi-grained breads and more fresh fruits and vegetables. Many people became vegetarians. But most consumers remained wedded to misleadingly promoted and greatly diluted UPFs, short on nutrition and long on harm to their health.
During recent decades there has been an increase in peer-reviewed scientific studies showing that certain foods you can easily buy in the markets can increase your life expectancy while others reduce your longevity. Long-time medical and science reporter/author Jean Carper boiled down these findings into a highly usable new little book titled, “100 Life or Death Foods: A Scientific Guide to Which Foods Prolong Life or Kill You Prematurely.” (See my recent column New Book: Choosing Regular Food to Extend Longevity, April 12, 2024).
On May 8, 2024 – the New York Times defined Ultraprocessed Foods (UPFs) as “using industrial methods and ingredients you wouldn’t typically find in grocery stores – like high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and concentrated proteins like soy isolate. They often contain additives like flavorings, colorings or emulsifiers to make them appear more attractive and palatable. Think sodas and energy drinks, chips, candies, flavored yogurts, margarine, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, sausages, lunch meats, boxed macaroni and cheese, infant formulas and most packaged breads, plant milks, meat substitutes and breakfast cereals.”
The Times continued: “In a large review of studies that was published in 2024, scientists reported that consuming UPFs was associated with 32 health problems, with the most convincing evidence for heart disease-related deaths, Type 2 diabetes and common mental health issues like anxiety and depression.” Caution, not all UPFs are associated with these problems.
UPFs make up two-thirds of the calories consumed by children and teenagers in the United States. Still, the giant food companies are getting away with little regulation, especially for their heaviest advertising that pushes their profitable ultraprocessed foods. Have you ever seen TV ads for fresh carrots, radishes, celery, lentils, spinach, kale and asparagus? Unlikely. The mass merchandising ads go for foods, described by a report in the journal BMJ, as “designed by manufacturers to achieve a certain ‘bliss point,’ which causes us to crave and overeat them. They also tend to be low in nutrients, such as fiber, vitamins and minerals.”
We are behind other governments in our official dietary guidelines. Canada and Mexico recommend avoiding or limiting UPFs while the U.S. guidelines make no mention of them. Such is the dominance of giant agribusiness corporations over the indentured U.S. Department of Agriculture and the mostly bought members of the Senate and House Agriculture Committees.
This corporate interference also extends to constantly putting such UPFs into school lunch programs.
Absent taking over the 535 members of corporate Congress by 250 million eligible voters, we are left with parents and their children availing themselves of publications such as CSPI’s Nutrition Action newsletter to become smart buyers and consumers of safer, healthier, nutritious food. If you can, add a home garden to your food supply.
Some of these simple recipes, often called a Mediterranean diet, are in my “Ralph Nader and Family Cookbook,” (2020) with an introduction on how my mother educated us very early on to want to eat nutritious foods prepared to be delicious as well. She baked her own bread, cooked “from scratch” and avoided processed foods with unknown ingredients, such as hot dogs.
Our snacks were fresh fruits and vegetables, including chickpeas, munched while walking to school. For a sweet taste, we were treated to honey and maple syrup. We were taught not to whine because it wasn’t smart and didn’t get us anywhere.
Parents are protectors of their children. They have to be especially on guard to protect their children from pervasive direct mass marketing, using influencers, peer groups, and abduction of their youngsters into the Internet Gulag. The earlier in their child’s life that parents do their job, the easier it will be. Children so liberated can become active allies of Mom and Dad, showcasing their special knowledge. (See, “You Are Your Own Best Teacher! Sparking the Curiosity, Imagination, and Intellect of Tweens” by Dr. Claire Nader).
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New Report Issues Dire Warning About Global Decline in Pollinators
'Their health is directly linked to our own well-being.'
Feb 26, 2016
Pollinators worldwide, from bees and butterflies to beetles and bats, face a grim state of affairs.
Climate change and land use changes drive many pollinator species toward extinction, including 16 percent of vertebrate pollinators. A new report shows that over 40 percent of invertebrate pollinators, like bees and butterflies, may be threatened locally.
This all adds up to very bad news for humans, the report details, as it poses risks to the global food supply.
The assessment released Friday is from the four-year-old Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a UN-formed body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). IPBES came to its first-ever analysis based on existing scientific studies.
"Pollinators are important contributors to world food production and nutritional security," said Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, co-chair of the assessment and senior professor at the University of Sao Paulo. "Their health is directly linked to our well-being."
IPBES describes their critical role as three-quarters of the "leading types of global food crops" rely at least in part on pollination by some of the 20,000 species of wild bees or other pollinators. In terms of monetary impact, that translates to as much as $577 billion worth of annual global food production.
"Without pollinators, many of us would no longer be able to enjoy coffee, chocolate, and apples, among many other foods that are part of our daily lives," said Simon Potts, Ph.D., the other co-chair and professor of biodiversity and Ecosystem Services at the University of Reading in the UK.
In addition to climate change and changes in land use, the report cites the decline of practices based on indigenous and local knowledge and insecticides like neonicotinoids as contributing to the decline of pollinators.
Some strategies for protecting pollinators include promoting sustainable agriculture, reducing pesticide exposure, and increasing diversity in pollinator habitats.
As far as a real impact from the group's report, Dave Goulson, author, bumblebee expert, and professor of biology at the University of Sussex, is skeptical.
"I would question whether any practical on-the-ground action to help pollinators will happen due to this document. We are in the midst of the sixth global mass extinction event, and we sit around spending thousands of hours writing documents about biodiversity. Still, we do not take action to address the fundamental issues causing this ecological catastrophe," Nature reports him as saying.
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